


Misfits, Strays, and Other Important Historical Figures

by bookishTomato



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, F/M, LE upped-and-vanished AU, M/M, Multi, a few plotholes wide enough to drive a space ship through, cuddle piles, dear god that's a long list of ships and characters, fix-it AU, let's just cram all the revolutions into the same time frame i guess, lots of ancestor noises, nobody dies everybody lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-06 05:37:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 31,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11029740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookishTomato/pseuds/bookishTomato
Summary: Essentially a what-if scenario involving the various revolutions happening at the same time, found families, and nobody dying.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! This has been in the works for over a year and a half, and I'm super excited about finally posting it. This is my first fic I've actually finished and posted, so fair warning.

Your name was MITUNA CAPTOR. Now you aren’t sure if you have a name anymore. Oh, you suppose your designated ship number is probably what people call you, but nobody bothered to tell you what it was. They just hooked you into the ship and set a course and just sorta expected you to fly them wherever they tell you. (Ones and zeroes, coordinates pulsing through you, weather reports, detours—)

To be honest, you think death would be better than the half-life of a helmsman.

You’ve been being a glorified battery for this ship for a while - you lost track after a sweep and a half, and you know that you won’t make it to the next sweep. You haven’t been able to feel your legs since three perigees ago, and your arms went numb two perigees before that. From the tiny bit of information you’ve managed to glean from other helmsmen on different ships when they were in range, that means nothing good.

What the hell. You’re going to die anyway. Fuck it. Might as well take some of these assholes with you. You stop powering the ship.

You see the trolls who work on the ship running around in a blurry panic, one or two swarming around you and checking ports and connections. There’s some sort of wetness pooling in your goggles and running down your cheeks. You aren’t sure if it’s blood or tears or sweat from keeping your power from the insistent tug of the ship.

You can feel the ship losing altitude. You lost track of where you were when the navigation systems cut out, but last you saw, the ship was over a desert, heading towards a mountain range. A sharp pain shoots through your cheek. One of the crewmembers must have slapped you. You can’t really blame them, though.

The faint noises have stopped around you, most of the crew probably having fled to the escape pods or to somewhere they think they can survive the crash. You know that the odds are that you won’t make it. You can’t quite make yourself care. You think someone pats your shoulder, but the whole world is tilting, and everyone has probably left by now.

You hear an impossibly loud crunch, have time to think, well, this was a sucky run, and then you can feel nothing.

 

Like through several layers of fabric, you feel gentle hands tugging at the ports on your arms. After the first few are unplugged, a second pair, this one faster and slightly calloused, takes over and the first starts unhooking your legs. Yet another pair dislodges the few that are around your horns and forehead before carefully pulling your goggles up and over your head. A small portion of your thinkpan wonders, why does this troll have six arms? as you halfheartedly growl at whatever weird thing is touching you.

Opening your eyelids seems like the hardest thing in the world, but you manage to open them in time to catch the hazy, yellow-tinted outline of a troll with the tiniest horns you’ve ever seen gently pap your face. What?

Oh. Oh, he's just wiping the blood-sweat-tears-whatever from your face. Now he’s picking you up. You try to growl threateningly again, but it’s barely audible to your own ears. Your head is resting on his chest, and you can more feel than actually hear what he’s saying, but before you can try to really decipher anything, you slip out of consciousness again.

 

The next time you wake up, it’s to shouting. You consider going back to sleep, but find you can’t. You attempt to push yourself up with an arm, squinting at the dim light, conveniently cutting off the shouting. A pair of hands grip your shoulders and gently push you back down, and your eyes shoot open to find the guy with tiny horns again, this time not under a sheen of yellow.

“Hey, don’t get up yet. See, ‘lin? Told you he’d wake up.”

“I didn’t say he wouldn’t wake up, I said that we can’t wait for him to wake up. We gotta go. It’s almewst sunset.” A well-muscled girl, certainly more than the nubby-horns guy, walks into your view. Her hair is a mess, with a few twigs and bits of grass strewn in. Her horns are larger, triangular and angled towards her head, sort of like meowbeast ears. You can’t see much of the rest of her from your somewhat awkward angle, since you’re still lying on the ground with your head propped up by some sort of balled up piece of cloth.

“Mom isn’t back yet, we can’t leave anyway,” argues nubby-horns. Meowbeast-horns sticks her tongue out at him and wanders out of your view.

“Whkkkk—“ you try to talk, but you voice barely rasps out of your mouth.

The girl comes back into view and hands a small container to nubby-horns. He presses the container to your face, saying, “It’s just water.”

You hadn’t realized how thirsty until the first drops hit your lips.

A couple coughs and almost half the container of water later, you try to repeat what you attempted, with very little success, to say before. “Why’d you..?”

“We aren’t just going to leave someone who’s practicatly defenseless by himself in a cave,” calls the girl from somewhere out of view. You can hear her messing around with something or another, but sitting up to look sort of feels like it would take the same amount of energy it takes to get to the moon.

“We pick up strays. It’s sort of our thing,” explains nubby-horns, “I mean, Mom started it, and I guess I just sort of learned it from her.”

“What’th a ‘mom’?” you ask, lisping through the s. It doesn’t sound like any name you’ve heard.

“It’s like a lusus, except she’s a troll,” says the girl from outside your vision. “Kan had to explain it to me, too.”

Nubby-horns’ name is Kan? You aren’t quite sure if you can even call yourself Mituna anymore. Or, well, if you want to. You don’t really think you’re the same troll you were what feels like a lifetime ago. But then, you have no idea what you could have done that would warrant an adult title. You glance at your arms through your peripheral vision. They’re wrapped in bandages, clothed in a loose t-shirt, and stick thin. You know your legs – fuck, most of you – are probably the same.  “—m Kankri, Meulin’s over there, what should we call you?” Oh. Nubby-horns is talking again. Kan must be a nickname, then.

You respond with a shrug. You’ve decided Mituna is definitely not a person you feel like you are anymore. Mituna was a wriggler, who lived in blissful ignorance of what going to a psionic academy actually meant. “Anything but ‘helmthman,’ I gueth,” you say. You never want to be called that again.

“Don’t remember – or have, I guess – a wriggler name?” You shrug again. “We’ll figure something out for you, then. At some point.”

A form blocks the late evening light coming in through the entrance of the cave, casting a tall shadow across the floor. You tense, and Kankri rests a hand on your shoulder, saying, “It’s just my mom.”

She enunciates every word clearly, saying, “Are you almost ready to go?”

“Yeah, just gotta figpurr out how we’re meowving him,” calls Meulin from behind you. The him in question is probably you. You could try to walk, but odds are it wouldn’t work very well, and using your psiionics to float yourself right now seems like it would be a bad idea, too. You figure standing is worth a shot anyway, though.

“I can thand—“ you start, attempting to use Kankri’s shoulder to haul yourself up, but even the attempt at pulling yourself up with your arm makes you feel light headed. “Nevermind.”

Your hand is still on his shoulder and you can feel it bounce slightly with his laughter before your hand slips off as he stands up. “I can probably carry him again, Mom.”

Kankri’s Mom walks into your field of vision, looking you up and down. She’s tall, with two straight, sharp horns, one of which is hooked at the end. Her skin is faintly luminous. You aren’t really sure why, though. “That should work, then. Young one, my name is Dolorosa. I suppose you may also call me ‘mother’ if you wish, as Meulin appears to be doing.”

“Love you too, Mom!” calls Meulin as she walks over, several bundles tied to her back and another tucked under her arm. “Seriously Kan, just pick him up and let’s go.”

“Do you mind?” He’s talking to you now, and making a sort of scooping hand motion at you.

“I don’t actually thee how it matterth if I mind or not.” You can’t walk. It’s not like you actually have another choice, other than to just lay here. Which, if you’re honest with yourself, doesn’t sound like a horrible idea.

“I thought I’d at least ask,” he mumbles, picking you up easily. One of his arms slides under your legs, the other supporting your back. “I’d try to put you on my back, but I’m not sure if that would work very well.”

“Thorry,” you say as he shifts you in his arms slightly, so you’re leaning into his shoulder. His chest and arms are surprisingly warm. Your head is actually almost level with his, and you can’t help but notice, once again, how tiny his horns are. From this angle, you can’t even actually see his other one. On the other hand, your own horns are probably half-lost in your hair right now. He doesn’t respond, but half-smiles at you instead. He carries you out of the cave and to a small cart, a single hoofbeast tied to the front.

Meulin is already in the cart, carefully arranging the bags of supplies she carried out. “Where are we headed, Mom?” she asks as Dolorosa follows behind you.

Kankri lifts you over the side of the cart, passing you to Meulin while Dolorosa gets in the front and picks up the reins, tossing the bundles she carries into the back. They roll to a stop near where you’ve been propped up against the side of the cart. “Redglare’s hive again,” she says with a sharp grin. Dolorosa catches your confused expression, and her smile softens. “She is a legislacerator-in-training, and a close friend of mine. It will be safe there.”

You aren’t too certain about this, but, again, there’s not much you can do. “Oh, wait, what are we going to do about the fake-quadrant thing?” Kankri asks, climbing into the cart and settling in beside you. “We need to fit him in somewhere. It’s suspicious otherwise,” he says to you. “We try to avoid as much scrutiny as we can.”

Meulin flops down across from you, saying, “We can switch it up, pretend to be hissmesises? Say he’s your matesprit and I’m his meowrail.”

Kankri shrugs, and gets a blanket out of one of the bags that he proceeds to cover you with, tucking it around your shoulders. “I don’t have any objections to it.” He reaches over across the cart and taps her shoulder. “Bet I can sell it more than you can.”

Three hours later, your head is in Meulin’s lap, and she and Kankri are throwing spades at each other. You aren’t even sure if they’re pretending anymore, some of the blackflirting seems pretty serious. Meulin actually challenged him to an arm wrestling contest. And then beat him, several times. Honestly, you’re slightly embarrassed for him. You were stopped once along the road, and you could practically see Meulin’s hackles rising. The troll that stopped Dolorosa was a thin, spindly cerulean blood, with a pair of yellow and purple bands around his upper arms. He backed off quickly, though, when Dolorosa fixed him with a death-glare. She starts the cart forward again, ignoring the cerulean falling behind you. Time passes. Three figures appear in the distance, and you can see Dolorosa tense like she’s ready for a fight as you get closer to them.

They’re highbloods, all three of them. A blue blood, a teal blood, and an indigo blood, walking close together. The indigo blood and the blue blood seem to be arguing, while the teal blood attempts to physically get between them. The indigo blood’s eyes flash, and he strikes out at her. Kankri glances uncertainly between you, Dolorosa, and Meulin, and when he starts making as if to climb out of the cart to go try to stop the brawl – which had shifted from teal-verses-indigo to indigo-verses-blue – you make a grab for his cloak. It’s safer to stay out of other people’s problems, to not draw attention to yourself. You aren’t very strong, and aren’t even sure he can feel the tug on his cloak, but Meulin catches the action and grabs the other side of it.

She’s certainly strong enough to get him back down into the bed of the cart, and the resulting thump derails the fight on the other side of the road. Kankri’s and Meulin’s faces pale suddenly, as both the blue blood and the indigo blood turn to stare at your cart.

You panic.

You haven’t tried to use your psionics since you got away from the ship yet, but, well, no time like the present. Blue and red crackles around the cart, and the hoofbeast neighs uncomfortably. You push forward, shooting the cart up the luckily straight road. Kankri falls over, shoulder bumping onto the floor of the cart. Meulin and Dolorosa both stay upright, though, and when you set the cart down several miles further up the road, the cart is in complete silence.

You’re still panicking. The fighting trolls are far enough away that they’re a non-issue, but now your new… friends? Acquaintances? Are staring at you. Kankri’s still sprawled on the floor, staring up at you, mouth slightly open, cheeks a faint red.

You pull your knees up to your chest. What if they just leave you here? They probably didn’t sign up for this. You were just starting to actually get comfortable with them. The blanket Kankri covered you with bunches up awkwardly as you wrap your arms around your legs and duck your head onto them.

A hand touches your shoulder, hesitantly, and when you peer up between your arms, Kankri’s smiling at you. “How does Psionic sound? For a name?”

“Psiioniic,” you say, testing it out. A faint smile tugs at your lips.

Your name is PSIIONIIC, and you think things might just be looking up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to concernedWallflower24 for betaing this and helping me name it! It might have just been titled "what" for the whole time I was working on it.  
> I've got the entire story finished, it just needs to finish getting edited. I'm planning on updating Mondays and Fridays, so another chapter should go up at some point tomorrow!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter two! Sorry, this got posted later than I'd planned on. Same as last time - special thanks to concernedWallflower24 for betaing and making me actually finish this!  
> 

It takes another four hours or so for the cart to arrive at Redglare’s house, and you end up taking a nap against Kankri’s shoulder. Your dreams, however, are anything but pleasant.

You’re running from something, and you’re not fast enough. You’ve never been particularly athletic, and have a tendency to overuse your powers, but for some reason they aren’t working. Something chuckles cruelly behind you, and the world dissolves into a writhing mass of ship bio-ports, clutching for your arms, your legs, wrapping around your waist, trying to pull you back down.

You hate it, you can’t get away, they’re going to make you fly without freedom again, and you _can’t_ do that. Not again. Not without losing any semblance of yourself. You struggle to escape the bio-wires, but they hook into the still-open ports on your neck, your back, arms, legs. You can’t get away from them, and as a pair of goggles are lowered over your eyes, you scream and-

-wake up to Kankri, rubbing circles into your back and saying, over and over, “It’s okay, you’re okay.”

You gasp for breath a few times, looking around for the ship and not finding it, instead finding a forest, with trees tall enough to partially blot out the night sky. Their leaves are all… purplish pink, and a long ladder is being lowered from a hive perched in one of the trees.

A slim form, all sharp angles and red and teal, drops down the ladder at a slightly alarming rate. The legislacerator who emerged from the hive strides towards you, wrapping Dolorosa into a quick hug before draping herself over the side of the cart. “Hey Signy, Dissy, who’s the newbie?”

You glance uncertainly at Kankri, and then at the troll you assume is Redglare. Her pair of red-tinted, pointed – like the rest of her – glasses slip down her nose as she looks you up and down. “Wait, wait, no, don’t tell me. We’re doing a profiling unit right now.” Pursing her lips, she crosses her arms. “Yellow blood, soooort of a mess, bicolored eyes, two sets of horns, obviously nervous, wrapped in way more bandages than are probably necessary.”

You don’t think they’re too bad, but maybe your (nonexistent) point of reference is off somehow.

“I’m thinkiiiiing…” she stretches the ‘i’ out for what feels like minutes before continuing, “Escaped slave of some sort? Usually only powerful psionics have the different colored eyes, and you’ve got mutations noticeable enough that they wouldn’t keep you around unless you were good.”

“Redglare, woah, that was pretty good! His name is Psiioniic,” Kankri smiles up at her, some faint, reddish color filtering to his cheeks. “I still think Signless is a stupid adult name, though.”

“I like it,” pouts Meulin. “And I think Disciple’s a good one for me, too.” She grins and reaches over to boop Kankri’s nose. “You’re just mad because you think it doesn’t sound cool.”

You guess these must be their adult names. Kankri – Signless? – is still staring at Redglare, a faint red blush coloring his cheeks. He’s a maroon blood, then. You hadn’t really been sure, since he’s wearing nondescript, gray clothes with the occasional touch of a bright red that certainly can’t be his. There’s no sign worked into the cloth, not like Meulin’s looped one or the intricate needlework on Dolorosa’s dress. You sort of want to know why that is, but then, you aren’t wearing your sign right now, either.

Meulin is starting to get out of the cart. “Hey, Psii, wanna hand me a couple of the bags? The ones next to you.” They’re light, probably full of clothes, but even that is a bit of a struggle to lift enough for Meulin to grab it. “Thanks,” she says, heading towards the ladder with two bundles slung over her shoulders.

“Hey,” Kankri says, tearing his eyes away from Redglare. “We need to get you up the ladder, and honestly, Red’s winch system is a mess.” You examine the fraying rope tied to what actually just looks like a barrel. The rope loops through a series of pulleys and looks like it would take the barrel to a balcony built into the side of the treehouse.

“I could probably catch myself if it fell,” you say, somewhat dubious. Despite taking a nap after your previous freak-out, you can still feel the headache that comes with over-exerting your psionics.

Kankri pulls on your arm, positioning you at the edge of the cart. “Do you think you can hang on if you get on my back? I need both arms to get up the ladder.”

It takes a bit of maneuvering, but you manage to get onto his back in a position that isn’t too uncomfortable. By the time the two of you make it to the ladder, with your arms wrapped around his neck and your legs attempting to lock around his waist, the others have already beat you to the top. The climb is somewhat precarious, and you’re forced to use your psionics when Kankri loses his grip on the next rung and almost topples you both over backwards. You don’t use them for any longer than it takes for him to regain his handhold, though, and he spends the rest of the way up apologizing, despite you telling him it was fine. Repetitively.

He puts you down on a chair in the front room of Redglare’s house. It certainly looks like she’s a student, with assignments and books scattered around and boxes of take-out perched on the armrests of the couch across from the chair you’re in. Dolorosa is tutting gently to herself and cleaning, while Redglare watches her, a strange expression on her face.

Meulin comes out of a doorway, holding a roll of bandages that she advances towards you with. “We should probably change those,” she says, before having the roll snatched out of her hands by Redglare.

“I’ll do it, I know where all my stuff is.” One of her bony arms slides underneath yours, hauling you to your feet. “I’m pretty sure you’ve got some fairly impressive atrophy here. What on earth were you doing? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone with atrophy on _all four limbs_ except this quadriplegic guy I knew who got culled, and – oh. Oh shit, you were-” She stops dead, in the middle of a hallway with a few forlorn looking dragon stuffed animals scattered on the ground. Her eyes go wide behind her glasses, and she hugs you. “Give me three hours and answer a few questions, I’ll find twenty different things they did that were illegal. You’re never going back.”

Her elbows and shoulders are sharp, and you aren’t sure if you’re supposed to be hugging her back, so you sort of rest your chin on her head for the few seconds it takes her to pull back and finish getting you to her bathroom.

“Mothergrub, Psii, what the fuck did they do to you?” she breathes after sitting you down on the edge of her ablution trap and taking off your (too wide and too short, probably Kankri’s) shirt and old bandages.

She wraps some bandages around your neck before letting you look down to where she’s winding the roll around your left arm. There are scabs, each the size of two of your thumbs, in lines up the insides of your arms and legs, dotting your sides, and lining your shoulder blades and neck. You shrug, saying, “Thip’th bioportth?”

“Fucking fucking fuck. Do you know how illegal that is?” She’s still wrapping your arm in bandages, anger in every line of her face, movements brisk and sharp. After she finishes bandaging your left arm, she ties a knot at the end tight enough to make you wince. “They’re only supposed to put ports on the outsides of legs and arms. There’s fewer nerves there, so it’s less painful and- and fries psionics less quickly, but it’s not as efficient. It’s shitty enough even when they do follow the rules, this is just--”

Hurriedly, she re-ties it looser before standing up abruptly and saying, “I’m not mad at you, it’s not your fault, but I _am_ going to throw something if I can’t go work on those twenty things right now. I’ll send Rosa in to finish this, stop her from cleaning up my stuff for a bit.”

You nod, absently tugging at some of the bandages on your arm as you stare out the window into the pinkish purple canopy of Redglare’s treehouse. You almost don’t notice when Dolorosa comes in, but her soft gasp announces her presence nicely, causing you to jerk your head to the side. “Oh, little one, you’re bleeding again,” she says, hurrying over to you.

When she bandages you, it’s much gentler than when Redglare did it. However, when you look at her face, her eyes are burning bright jade and her skin is luminescent. When she catches your gaze, she offers you a reassuring smile that exposes sharp teeth, which isn’t particularly abnormal, but combined with the glowing, it’s a little unsettling.

She ties a knot around your right wrist, tucking it neatly back into the bandages, before wrapping your torso, and then moving onto your legs. “You really are safe here, you know,” she offers, the anger that shines off her almost completely absent from her voice. “Redglare might still be a student, but she is very good at what she does. And we never abandon anyone, if we can help it.”

You look at the top of her head, to where she’s kneeling in order to get to your legs better. “Why not? It would be eathier, and you don’t even know me,” you say, attempting – unsuccessfully – to push your somewhat annoyingly long bangs back. They keep getting in your eyes, and you usually wouldn’t care, but they’re also matted with sweat and dirt and probably blood. Lovely.

“If I gave up on anyone because it was easier to do so, Kankri would not be here, and, by extension, neither would Meulin. It would be a great disservice to myself, as I cannot fathom what my life would be like if I were still in the breeding caverns. I have found that helping others, even when it puts you out of your way, can lead to the best things in your life.” Once she’s done bandaging you, she stands up and sort of looks at you for a few seconds.

“Would you like me to clean your hair?” she says as she puts up the roll of bandages, now almost completely gone, on the top of a small cabinet that protrudes from the wall. “We need to replace the bandage on your head, and if you would like, I could also trim your hair a bit.”

You shrug, reaching for the shirt you had been wearing before and find that it’s just farther than you can actually stretch your arms. “I guetth,” you say. It might make you feel a little better if your hair wasn’t a mess. Before Dolorosa can hand the shirt to you, your eyes flash brighter with your psionics for a second and the shirt floats over to you, haloed in red and blue. You slip it on over your head, and when you emerge from the collar, you look up at her and offer a lopsided, toothy grin.

She gets a chair from somewhere outside the room and returns quickly, helping you over to where she set up the chair in front of the ablutions basin. She washes through your hair quickly and efficiently, scrubbing it with what you assume is Redglare’s shampoo. It smells like cherries.

After she rinses it, she helps you dry it with a soft, bright red towel. When she turns the chair around so you can see into the mirror, you have to peer through your hair to do so. Apparently it becomes what is basically a fluffy mess when you wash it. You remember struggling to get it into a shape that allowed you to actually see for perigees back when you were a wriggler. You don’t think you ever really found one that would work without attacking your hair with a pair of scissors.

Dolorosa holds your bangs up and out of the way for the time it takes her to loop a bandage around your forehead, too. As she pats your hair back down, Kankri sticks his head into the room. You think. You push your bangs to the side far enough that you can verify, yes, that’s Kankri. It’s completely silent in the room for a few moments, as you attempt to peer through your hair at him. Dolorosa finally clears her throat, and you can sort of see Kankri jump at the noise.

“Oh, right, sorry. Uh, Redglare’s ordering pizza, and wanted to know if Psii had a preference?”

“Not really,” you say.

“Why don’t we get your hair out of your eyes, at least?” Dolorosa asks as Kankri leaves the room. You catch another glimpse of him as he leaves, the back of his neck and the tips of his ears flushing red.

Nodding, you reach up to assess how long your hair is in the back. “Can we cut it thort? It’th annoying when it’th long.”

“Of course,” she says, reaching or a pair of scissors. You sit quietly as she snips away, telling you about some of the more ridiculous things that Kankri and Meulin have done. Apparently Meulin hunts quite a bit, and whenever she tries to teach Kankri to hunt as well, they come back with nothing to show for it and completely coated in mud.

Your new haircut doesn’t look bad, and you actually sort of like it. You still have some bangs, but they’re much shorter now, and it’s a bit longer on the sides and top than the bottom.  “Thankth,” you say as she helps you stand up, supporting you until you can get back into the chair you were sitting in before, in the main room.

Meulin is sitting on Kankri, who’s spluttering some protest or another to whatever she’s just said. Redglare is out on the balcony, waving her arms angrily at a large white dragon, who you assume is her lusus. You don’t think you’ve seen anyone with a dragon for a lusus before, though.

“—im! Seriously, Kan, it’s all ofur your face!” Meulin laughs, poking at Kankri’s still-reddened cheek.

“Meulin, get off me, they’re coming back,” he whines, shoving at her shoulders as he catches you and Dolorosa coming back into the room. You can actually see him staring at you as he shoves Meulin off of him, and he sort of squeaks out, “I’ll see when the pizza’s supposed to show up,” before leaving the room at an almost-run.

“Don’t mind him,” Meulin says, stifling a giggle into her hair, “He’s just in denial.”

You take another nap in the chair in an attempt to get rid of the migraine that’s steadily hammering your head and wake up some length of time later to Redglare dropping a paper plate with a couple slices of pizza onto the small table next to the chair you’re sitting in. Someone has draped a blanket over you, and you knock the upper portion of it into your lap as you sit up.

“Pizza’s here,” Kankri says, somewhat redundantly since you’ve already been given your piece. “Water good? I’m not sure Redglare has anything else that isn’t made of liquid caffeine.”

You nod, taking a bite out of the pizza you were given. You haven’t really had actual food in perigees. Nutrients were pumped in through the bioware, of course, but it’s not really the same thing. It tastes like heaven. Greasy, cheesy heaven. When Kankri hands you the glass of water, you drain half of it in one gulp.

Redglare and Dolorosa are sitting on the couch, while Meulin sprawls in the middle of the floor. Kankri sits down next to the couch, so he can lean against Dolorosa’s legs while still facing you. Redglare’s scribbling furiously in a notebook, talking under her breath in a tone that sounds like it means she wants to cull something. Dolorosa carefully takes the pen from her, slipping it into the notebook and placing both of them on an end table.

“Redglare’s only got two respiteblocks, so usually me and Kan share one of them. You can sleep with us, or I guess you could take the couch. Whatefur makes you more comfurtable. There’s only one ‘coon but you can use it, ‘claws Kan and I don’t use them anyway.”

It’s close enough to daytime for anyone to actually be worried about sleep arrangements? You glance out the window and spend a few seconds failing to find the sky before you spot a tiny patch of stars between two tree branches. You can see a faint touch of dusky pink to the purple of the night sky, and decide, yeah, it probably is late enough that they need to be worrying about sleep arrangements.

“I can just thleep on the couch,” you say, running your tongue over your too-big teeth. The couch isn’t long enough for you to stretch out on it, but it should work.

“You sure?” Kankri says.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

You are not fine.

You’re wrapped in the blanket someone had given you earlier, laying on your side, and curled into a ball small enough that you only take up half the couch. You’d fallen asleep for a bit earlier, but woke up a scant hour or so later convinced you were back on the ship. You’re afraid to close your eyes, afraid that you’ll wake up and be back on the ship.

You’ve been staring at the wall for what feels like ages now. The only thing that’s changed is the exact pattern of shadow cast by the combination of harsh sunlight, thick curtains, and tree leaves. A door creaks open, and you startle badly enough that you fall off the couch.

“Mi—are you okay?” Kankri’s up, still half asleep and rubbing his eyes as he helps you off the floor. “Did I wake you up?”

“Nnnh,” you mumble, curling up back into the ball on the side of the couch. “I wath awake.”

“Do you mind if I sit here for a bit?” he asks, carefully. You sort of shrug from where you’re sitting, so he sits down next to you. “I just—I have these dreams,” he starts, fidgeting with the bottom of his shirt. “Uh, if you want to just go back to sleep, don’t let me stop you, I can shut up.”

“No,” you say, shuffling yourself so you’re turned a bit more towards him, “I don’t think I’m going to get much more thleep.”

“If it’s really alright then, I don’t want to—“ you fix him with a stare that says something along the lines of _I’m way too tired for your bullshit just get on with it_ but hopefully in a way that doesn’t make him run off?

You aren’t really sure what you’re doing.

“I—uh, we probably should have told you earlier, but, well, if you wanted to leave when you’re up to it, I wouldn’t blame you, and we can probably get you to a city or something—“

“What?” He’s sort of babbling at you, and you partially uncurl from your current position so you can stare him more easily.

“Uh—I’m sort of a mutant? Which is why Dolorosa left the breeding caverns with me, I wouldn’t have gotten a lusus otherwise and I would have died so I’m really glad she did but sometimes it feels like it would have been easier for all of us if she hadn’t? But, I mean, I guess it is better this way. Uh, so, if you were worried about how much of a non-issue your mutations were that’s why, I guess.”

“I had a luthuth,” you say. Had. Past tense. Kankri looks completely awake now, eyes wide. He’s young enough to still have completely gray eyes, probably about the same age as you, if not a little younger. “Your mutation ithn’t ath obviouth ath mine are, though.” He never did say what it actually _was._ You’re uncertain if that was on purpose, or if he just forgot.

“Oh—I, uh. I’m offspectrum.” Huh. You could have sworn he was a maroon blood. “I can show you, if—“

“Pleathe don’t thtart bleeding, I’ll jutht take your word for it.” He smiles a bit at this, hands dropping limp again from where you assumed they were getting ready to call on a strife specibus.

“So, yeah, I’m offspectr—oh, already said that. Uh, specifically, bright red. Like, the color of your right eye.” His hands knot themselves into the edge of his shirt again as he continues, “Like I said, once you’re healed up enough, we can take you to a city or something. If you want. I’d- I’d really like it if you stayed, but you don’t have to.” He’s looking down, and his hair is just long enough to hide part of his face.

You find yourself wishing you could hug him, that you could find the words to say _No, I like it here, I don’t want to leave_ in a way that wouldn’t sound incredibly clingy, so you settle for smiling at him and saying, “Thank you.”

He looks up at you, face reddened. You really should have noticed that it’s a brighter shade than it would be on a maroon blood, but you like it. He’s smiling, and when he stands up, he offers you a hand. “It’s only around noon, you could come back and try to sleep with me and Meulin, if you wanted.”

You take the offered hand, and follow him into the guest respiteblock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter three should go up on Friday, hopefully a little earlier in the day. Thank you!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to concernedWallflower24 for betaing again! A good portion of this fic is, in fact, me just really wanting everyone to be safe and comfortable, so I guess warning for self-indulgent cuddlepiles? ???

You wake up with a weight on your stomach, and another on your thigh. You manage to prop yourself up on your elbows, and find Kankri’s head pillowed on your stomach. Just past him, Meulin’s laying on your left thigh, facing him. They’re talking quietly, and you can’t quite make out what they’re saying.

“—anything—sleep—fine,” is all you can make out. Kankri’s doing most of the talking, but Meulin catches your eye and smiles at you, and winks. Why did she wink at you? You’re still partially asleep, and incredibly confused.

“Morning!” she mock-whispers over Kankri’s head. He startles, somehow having missed your movement. Kankri sits up almost right away, but Meulin takes a few more seconds to stretch, yawning loudly.

“Hello,” you say, somewhat uncertainly. Neither of them are laying on you now, and you struggle for a few seconds to get out of the blankets tangled around your chest. When you’ve untangled the blankets, they pull you to your feet and get you into the main room, where Dolorosa is cooking something or another that smells delicious.

Weeks pass. You spend your nights listening to Redglare rant about her classes and the idiots that she has to deal with in the evening. Some of the funnier ones include a teal blood guy who keeps red flirting with her, despite the fact that she’s taken every opportunity to dissuade him, an olive blood girl with an annoying habit of showing up half an hour early to pick up her moirail, and some cerulean blood who keeps trying to get her to do their homework. Dolorosa gets you to draw your sign for her, and disappears for two days before returning with an entire wardrobe that fits you perfectly. You usually opt for wearing either one of the tank tops or one of the button-downs. Those are easiest to get on.

Kankri explains to you that they move around a lot. Sometimes they stay with Redglare, sometimes they wander from town to town, sometimes they stay in Meulin’s old cave, which is where they were when they found you.

Meulin helps you exercise, finding you a rubber ball and dragging you down the ladder so you two can walk in the forest. She occasionally ditches you to go hunt – she tried to take you once, but, well, glowing eyes aren’t particularly conducive to stealth.

You also might have freaked out and vaporized a small animal with your eyebeams. Which you haven’t used for over a sweep. You had forgotten how bad of a headache you got from those.

Some four weeks later, Dolorosa pronounces you as able to stop wearing bandages over about eighty percent of your body. It feels odd, and there are slightly yellowish scars dotting your legs, arms, torso, neck, and forehead, but it’s nice to not have to deal with someone changing the bandages every couple of nights.

Kankri stares at you a little more, now, when he thinks you’re not watching. Whenever you glance in his direction, he hurriedly looks away. He’s probably staring at your scars, but it doesn’t stop when you opt for a long sleeve shirt instead. It’s honestly starting to freak you out.

Meulin says that he’s just in denial, and when you ask what, exactly, he’s in denial _of,_ she just laughs at you.

“Seriously, Psii, it’s more fun to just watch him. If it gets really bad, I’ll step in, but I’m not going to get involved unless I have to,” she says, still laughing. “If it’s really pawthering you, talk to him about it.”

“Nhhhh,” you say, burying your face in a blanket, “What if I’m jutht overthinking thingth?”

“Nah, he’s actually staring at you.” Meulin is drawing some picture or another, but whenever you try to look over at it, she pulls it against her so you can’t see it.

You really don’t want to say anything, though, so you go back to attempting to ignore it.

You’re not the only one he stares at, though. One day, he wakes up in a bad mood, a tiny frown fixed on his face. He spends a little less time staring at you, and a little more time staring at Redglare.

Redglare is gone for most of the night, going to her school, which is one of the few that requires a physical presence. Once she’s done with her homework, she occasionally drags you away from Meulin and Kankri to play video games. “Rosa’s tried to play with me a couple of times, but she’s not very good,” Redglare explains, “You’re good enough that multiplayer games aren’t me dragging you through and in versus games it’s a challenge to beat you.”

You like playing video games with Redglare. It gives you the weirdest feeling of familiarity, though, which sort of throws you off. But it’s a comfortable feeling, too. You tell her as much, and she replies, “Yeah, same here. Hey, maybe when you’re well enough, we can go ‘boarding. There’s a place sorta near here, by my school, that’s great for it.”

The two of you lapse into a companionable silence, punctuated by the occasional curse. By occasional, you mean the steady stream of lisped cussing that you’re muttering under your breath, and the louder, periodic cursing that Redglare indulges in.

Some half hour into you and Redglare’s gaming session, Kankri walks into the room. He takes a look at the scene – you draped over the couch and quietly cursing, Redglare leaning forward with her elbows on her knees, practically shouting expletives.

“Redglare, have you seen—oh, sorry, never mind, I’ll come back later—“

“Signy, you don’t have to leave. I’ve got a spare controller if you wanna jump in next round,” Redglare says, sitting back slightly.

“No, no, I can—sorry for interrupting—“He backs out of the room, avoiding your gaze.

“Kankri,” you say, and he almost breaks into a run in his haste to get out. “Thorry Red, I think I need to talk to him.”

“Eh, no prob. I can finish beating you later, I really need to get this essay done on property laws. Honestly, it’s not even _good_ laws. It’s just ‘you get whatever the highbloods don’t want.’”

You’ve learned, over the last few weeks, that Redglare hates unfair laws. With a passion. She usually ends up writing two essays – one carefully screened by Dolorosa to make sure it’s appropriate, and one that angrily explains how the law should be fixed.

When you get to your feet, leaving the remote behind, it takes a few minutes to figure out where Kankri went. You find him tucked into the crook of a tree, above and to the right of the balcony. Gauging the distance and deciding it might be a bad idea for you to attempt to climb up to where he is sitting, you use your psionics to float you up to where he is, and look at him questioningly for a second. He still doesn’t meet your eyes, but shuffles over enough that you can sit next to him.

“You _are_ going to stay, right?” he asks, hands fisting in the hem of his shirt in a familiar gesture that you’ve decided is definitely more adorable than it has any right to be.

“Yeth? I thought I thaid I would,” you say, confused. Hadn’t you had that middle of the night conversation, about a month ago?

“I wasn’t sure,” he says, “You might’ve changed your mind.” He’s swinging his legs back and forth under the branch and looking down at the balcony below you.

“Why would I have changed my mind?” Sure, your occasional mood swings can be really confusing, but the only thing that really changes is your opinion of yourself.

“I dunno,” he says, kicking at a leaf. “I just wasn’t sure.”

“I like thith. I like living with you – and Redglare and Meulin and Dolorotha, too,” you add on hurriedly. You think he and Disciple have a thing. They flirt, but you still haven’t managed to figure out which quadrant they’re flirting _in._ One moment, she’ll be stalking up to him with lidded eyes and a purr in her throat, the next, she’ll be punching him in the arm hard enough to bruise, then pressing a kiss to said bruise. It’s gotten confusing enough, especially after the couple of times you think they might have been waxing ashen towards you. You excused yourself, though, and hid with Redglare for a while. You haven’t built up the courage to ask them what on earth they’re doing, but.

Well.

You’ll get to it.

Eventually.

You’ve had to come to terms with the fact that you’ve probably got a huge crush on Kankri, over the past few weeks. You have no idea if it’s flush or pale, either. You’ve been sort of attempting to ignore the crush in hopes that it’ll go away, but, well, he’s adorable. And both he and Meulin are fond of snuggling in their sleep, usually dragging you into their knot of limbs.

After the first half-dozen times you woke up with Kankri’s arm thrown over your chest, or Meulin’s legs tangled in your own, or tucked between them, you’d given up on trying to avoid it.

Kankri is still staring down at his knees as they swing back and forth as you shift a bit to get into a more comfortable position. “I don’t want to leave,” you say.

He’s silent, then, for the space of a few seconds. Then, he reaches up and brushes your bangs to the side, turning to look at you as he did so. His cheeks are flushed red, and you know yours are probably an equally bright yellow. “I’m glad,” he says, and as you attempt to scoot slightly closer, you lose your balance on the branch and slip off of it.

“’tun—“ Kankri shouts after you as you drop, but somehow manages to bite of both the beginning and ending of the word. You catch yourself with your psionics, a flickering coat of blue and red covering your limbs as you float yourself back up.

“I’m fine,” you say, bobbing somewhat sheepishly in front of the branch.

Kankri had both hands clapped over his mouth, and his legs were tucked up far enough so that he was gripping the tree with them. His eyes were wide with shock, the barest hint of bright red touching the center of the gray. That’s new. “Don’t do that!” he says, through his hands.

“Wathn’t on purpothe,” you admit, “but I’m fine. Thince we’re up here anyway…” You reach out and offer a hand to him. “Fly with me?” You haven’t flown, just for the sheer joy of it, in what seems like ages, and the sky is wide and open and dark above the trees.

He stares at your hand for a few moments, before lowering his from his face and placing one in yours. You expand the area you’re covering with your psionics, lifting him from the tree, too, and carrying both of you above the purple-pink leaves around you.

There’s only one moon out tonight, the large, pink one, flushing the world and reflecting off the leaves. The stars are pinpricks of light in the sky, clouds obscuring a few as they scuttle across. Kankri’s hand is warm in your own, a heat you’ve come to associate with safety. You don’t think even maroon bloods get as hot as he does, but you welcome the heat. The night air is cool, and as you spiral upwards, it only gets cooler.

When you look back at where he’s hovering behind you, you can see his eyes widening in amazement. “How do you manage to come down?” he asks, voice soft.

“I have thingth to do down there,” you say. “People to thee.” You wish you didn’t have to go down, sometimes. You could spend forever just flying, no barriers keeping you in, no plan on where to go. You climb even higher into the sky, and then glance mischievously at Kankri. “Thoughth on thkydiving?”

“What?”

You let your psionics fizzle out, dropping the two of you down through the sky. Kankri screams, pulling the two of you closer together and crushing you into a panicked hug. You laugh, laugh all the way down as he practically screams in your ear. Some bird flies upwards as you pass it, and the look of complete confusion on its face is enough to set you off again.

You catch the both of you at the last second, mere feet above the trees, and he stares at you for a few seconds, breathless and windswept, before saying in a tone that borders on fond, “You’re completely insane.” As he says this, he tightens the already tight death grip hug he’d caught you in before for a few seconds, before easing back to a more comfortable level of cling.

Your grin is wide, almost impossibly so, as you fly the both of you in loops, spiraling upwards and dipping down again. You don’t drop yourself and Kankri again, but you’re sort of tempted to. He doesn’t let go of you as you fly, smiling around at the sky.

The two of you spend a good couple of hours just flying aimlessly, but when the sky starts to lighten near the horizon, Kankri tugs on your hand. “We should probably go back,” he says, regret bleeding into his voice. “It’s almost dawn.”

Reluctantly, you fly back to the treehouse, Kankri still looping an arm around your waist. When the two of you alight on the balcony, Meulin rushes out and hugs you. “Where the heck did you guys go?!” she says, reaching up to wrap an arm around your neck and hauling you down. “We clawght you’d gotten cat-purred by impurrial drones or something.”

“No—“ Kankri wriggles around a bit in order to get Meulin’s arm in a position that doesn’t cut off quite as much airflow “—we just went for a fly, we should have told you, but, well…” He trails off, glancing up at you.

“Thpur of the moment thing?” you say. Honestly, you aren’t entirely certain what made you ask him to go with you. You don’t regret it, though.

Redglare comes out onto the balcony and smacks you on the shoulder with a slim, white, dragonhead-capped cane. “Don’t wander off without giving me a heads up. I thought you were gonna come finish our round once you and Signy were done having your chat.”

You manage to get an arm up enough that you can rub where she hit you. It’ll probably bruise, but you’re wrapped up in all of your friends, not new friends anymore, but friends that you’re slowly growing more comfortable with, letting yourself rely on, trusting more. It’s certainly more than you’d had during the just under two sweeps that you were onboard the ship for.

Dolorosa is leaning in the doorway, smiling slightly. “You should all come inside,” she says, “The sun is coming up.”

She bustles all four of you inside, lowering the curtains once everyone is in. “Don’t think I’ll be able to go to sleep yet,” Meulin complains, “Too much excitement.”

“Movie day, maybe?” Redglare suggests, “Rosa, mind making popcorn while we fight over what movie we wanna play?”

Meulin drags you and Kankri to the couch, flopping onto your other side – the one that Kankri wasn’t still hugging – and stretches her arm around your back to rest on his shoulder. “I vote something actiony,” she says, tugging a blanket down from the back of the couch with her free hand.

Kankri mutters something about maybe watching a romance movie, while Redglare practically demands a crime movie of some sort. “What about you, Psii?” asks Redglare, poking her way through the mess of movies she has underneath the visionbox.

“…maybe thomething with thpace?” you say, hesitant. You haven’t seen very many movies recently, so you’re reasonably sure that you won’t have seen anything they come up with.

Whatever movie they end up putting on, the combination of mental exhaustion from using more of your psionics than you’re used to – not bad enough to be a migraine, but it would turn into one, given time – and the warm-and-cool bodies pressed into your sides puts you to sleep fairly quickly. You wake up, though, when Dolorosa places a bowl of popcorn in your lap.

You blink blearily up at her, Kankri tucked into one side and Meulin tucked into the other. Kankri looks like he’s half asleep, but Meulin is completely awake and grinning up at you. Dolorosa shoots an apologetic glance back towards you while Redglare drags her into the armchair she’s already sitting in.

The movie that got picked is playing; the heroine and her moirail are interrogating someone who you _think_ is supposed to be the black interest of the film. Honestly, you aren’t entirely certain what’s going on, but from the bits of the title you’ve actually been listening to, it sounds like they get hauled into a quadrant flipping mess where the moirail auspices for the other two, gets killed, and something about how the other two end up being moirails instead. Large quantities of quadrant flipping in anything just get you confused.

Speaking of quadrant flipping, Meulin and Kankri are having a popcorn fight over your lap. It’d started when Meulin started pelting a still-drowsy Kankri with popcorn, and had escalated to them throwing it at each other, more of it going on the floor than either they or you ate. Dolorosa and Redglare have their own bowl, and Dolorosa picks out any bits that Redglare drops and has a small pile of the crumbs on the end table next to their chair.

You frown down at Kankri and Meulin after they manage to bounce a popcorn kernel off each of your cheeks. “Are either of you actually watching the movie?”

“Not really,” Meulin admits, “I didn’t really wanna watch this one, anyway, I just can’t sleep yet.”

“I _was_ ,” Kankri says, “Until someone started throwing popcorn at me.”

“You were sleeping!”

“That doesn’t mean you should wake me up!”

“You’re the one who wanted a romance movie—“

“I was ready to just go to sleep!”

“You were sleeping. On Psii.”

“Would you both jutht thhut up and watch the movie?” you say, lisp thickening. They both fall silent, and you find yourself blushing because that was actually blatantly ashen and you can’t believe that you just said that.

Dolorosa’s looking over at the three of you, smiling faintly. Redglare is sitting practically on top of her, one elbow propped up on the chair’s arm rest while the other arm wraps over Dolorosa’s neck. Her legs are draped over Dolorosa’s lap, and their bowl of popcorn is cradled in her own.

“What’th going on in the movie again?” you ask, desperate to change the subject.

“They’re hunting down someone who’s selling intel to a planet that’s trying to resist the Empire. Plot’s not stellar – heh, space puns – but it’s decent enough. Little bit propaganda-y at a couple of points,” muses Redglare.

You (attempt) to turn your attention back to the screen, watching the moirail – or auspice, maybe, you aren’t sure what’s going on at this point – shoot out of their ship in an escape pod. Said escape pod is abruptly rammed into by what you assume is the bad guys’ ship. It’s got actual engines, so it’s probably not troll-made.

You’re thinking something like Carapace-made, but you could also be wrong. Your ship didn’t have much on different species in the databanks, since it never left the atmosphere, and before that, well, you were more interested in other things. Namely, coding and video games.

Now that you think about it, you’re probably light years behind on coding languages. Maybe you’ll see if Redglare can find you a book or two on it, or borrow a computer or something. The lead and the black-turned-ashen-turned-red interest are screaming at the aliens, and you’re resolutely staring at the screen.

“Psii? Hey Psii? You gonna eat any of the popcorn?” Meulin says, squirming around until she’s laying in your lap, moving the popcorn bowl so it’s sitting on her stomach, instead.

“I guetth,” you say, grabbing a handful and eating it, piece by piece, now that you’ve been reminded that it has a purpose other than Meulin and Kankri throwing it at each other. When you turn your attention back to the movie, the lead and the quadrant interest are kissing while something that sort of looks like a volcano explodes dramatically in the background. At your other side, Kankri’s dozed off again, head leaning on your chest with your arm wrapped over his shoulder.

When you notice this, you’re very careful not to shift too much. You know. Just in case you wake him up.

After the movie’s over, Redglare and Dolorosa wander off to, presumably, go to sleep. If they’re doing anything other than sleeping, you really, really don’t want to know. Meulin extracts herself from the couch, looking down at you and Kankri. You’re still afraid that you’ll wake him up if you try to stand up, but, well, you aren’t sure you want to sleep on the couch. “Want me to carry him?” Meulin whispers.

“I think I’ve got it,” you say, rallying your drowsy powers enough to float him, just a bit, enough that you can support the rest of his weight with an arm under his knees. “Yeah, I got it.”

Meulin walks in front of you, opening the door so you don’t have to try to juggle your sleeping friend and the door handle at the same time. She closes the door behind you, and dives into the pile of blankets and pillows you usually sleep in. You go to put Kankri down, but he’s still got his arms wrapped around your waist.

You don’t so much put Kankri down as somehow manage to arrange yourself so that both of you are sort of laying down. Meulin wriggles over so she’s pressed into Kankri’s back. You start, a bit, when Kankri shuffles closer to you, burying his face in your chest. Your face heats up, and Meulin snickers at you over Kankri’s head.

“He hasn’t left your side since you guys got back,” she says, wiggling her eyebrows at you. “I’ll assume that you guys had a conversation of some sort. Don’t think it was the _whole_ conversation, but it was a start. Good job.”

You’re still blushing, and on impulse you bury your face in Kankri’s hair. It smells like something sort of like cinnamon, and something spicy. You mutter a thank you into his head, and fall into a dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Questions, concerns, comments, feel free to drop me a line. Thanks for reading, the next chapter will be up on Monday!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, thanks to concernedWallflower24 for betaing! I'm posting this at a more reasonable time of the day (which is a good start) and from her house, so that's cool. Have some more disaster children.

You knew that Kankri had dreams, sometimes, vivid dreams that he refused to tell you. You never told him about your dreams, either, not any of the nightmares, and certainly not any of the awkward dreams that, well, come with being adolescent.

Half the time, you don’t even admit those dreams to yourself.

So, when you wake up the next evening to Meulin gone, and Kankri tense and almost vibrating beside you, you’re understandably confused.

He’s still asleep, that much is clear, but his fists are clenched behind your back and every muscle in his body is coiled tight. “KK,” you whisper, “Kankri, wake up.”

“Nnnh,” he says. Mutters. You awkwardly slide your hands over his back, attempting for “soothing” and probably ending up closer to “uncomfortable.” It doesn’t seem to matter, though, because he slowly un-tenses, relaxing back into your arms and snuggling closer.

You lay there for another good half hour, watching the top of his head as he sleeps in a way that you attempt to convince yourself isn’t slightly creepy, before you start to unwrap yourself. It takes the occasional use of your psionics, but you manage to detangle the two of you without waking him up, only for him to poke his head over the soft pile as you’re picking out clothes to change into.

He’s got a messy case of bedhead, with a weird little flat spot on top – probably from you, now that you think about it – and it’s completely and utterly adorable. He blinks sleepily at you, yawning and rubbing an eye. You hurriedly turn back to your clothes, grabbing whatever shirt and pants you can find first.

When you close the door to the bathroom so you can change, you realize that you grabbed a short sleeve shirt. You look down at the scars dotting the insides of your arms, pale yellowish gray surrounded by the darker gray of your skin, and sigh. Whatever, you aren’t going anywhere and everyone here already knows they’re there.

This particular shirt has your symbol embroidered in yellow on the shoulder and is completely plain otherwise, and the pants are dark gray with a single red stripe running down one leg, and a blue down the other. They’re actually really comfortable, and almost make up for the shirt. When you leave the bathroom, contemplating grabbing a jacket, Kankri gently brushes your arm with his shoulder as he walks past you.

You head into the main room, and sit in the corner on the couch. Everyone else is already up. You assume Meulin got up early and went hunting, and a few minutes after you sit down, Dolorosa pushes Redglare out of the kitchen area and shuts the door firmly in her face.

“I don’t burn  _ water _ !” whisper-shouts Redglare at the door. “That’s impossible! According to physics!”

Either Dolorosa didn’t hear her, or she’s pretending she didn’t, since no response is given. You trace one of the scars on your left arm with a finger, circling it while staring at your knees and sort of half-smiling.

Redglare, evidently giving up on getting back in the kitchen, plops onto the couch next to you and sort of nudges you with her elbow. “So, you and Signy, huh?”

You blush, hand stilling at the edge of the scar closest to your wrist. “What?” You hope you don’t sound too defensive, but you probably really, really do.

“I’m not blind, you know.”

“Your glathheth are parthially opaque.”

“If I can see the tension through my glasses, it really, really is there.”

“What doeth that even mean?”

“Tension? Of the romantic persuasion? C’mon, Meulin’s not the only one around here who can sense a developing romantic relationship.”

“Red, you’re doing the thing again. The one where you interrogate people.”

“And you’re avoiding the question.” She crosses her arms, glasses sliding enough down her sharp nose that she can peer over them at you. “You and Signy. Spill.”

You’re saved from having to figure out a new way to avoid the question by Kankri himself, wandering into the room and flopping down on the couch on the other side of Redglare. You tuck your arms into your sides so that the scars are hidden away. Redglare gives you a look that says  _ This conversation isn’t over _ before getting up again and going back into the kitchen.

“Hi,” he says, fidgeting with the edge of what has to be one of a million different slightly too big sweaters that he owns. This one’s got a wide collar, showing collarbones that you sort of want to touch. You contemplate sitting on your hands, but decide that’s too obvious.

You follow the yellow lines down the sides of your pants with your eyes. “Hi,” you say, in almost the exact same tone as him. “Uh.”

“Morning?” he says. Asks. You nod at him, still not meeting his eyes because you’re completely and utterly awkward  _ why can’t you just look at him. _ You jerk your head up and look over at him. His hair’s still a complete mess, sticking out at all angles. He looks more awake than he did before, but then, that’s not saying much. “Uh. I’m sorry if I—“

“No, you’re fine,” you say. He was probably going to apologize for the cuddling-thing, but, well, you’d really rather he didn’t. You sort of want to say something along the lines of  _ let’s do it again sometime _ but, well, if you did, you think you might just turn completely yellow.

Honestly, though, you’d like to avoid any complications that would cause, so you don’t say anything until Redglare comes out of the kitchen, frowning at you as she hands you a cup of coffee. “Thankth,” you say, taking a sip.

Kankri doesn’t drink coffee, though, and as Dolorosa flits in and out of the room with bits of food for various people, he doesn’t say anything, either.

“Thould I thtart calling you and Meulin Thignlethh and Dithciple?” you ask. You’re not sure if you want to, but, well, it’s probably fair. Nobody here knows your wriggler name.

“If you want? It might be easier not to,” he says. Neither of you look at each other. “Uh. I mean, it hasn’t come up, but it’s probably smart to use adult names in public, probably.” He seems undecided, opening his mouth and then closing it again. “Hey, um, Psii? Can I talk to you?”

“Uh.” That sounds kinda ominous. You put down your coffee. “Okay?” He leads you back to the respite block Meulin, you, and him all sleep in. She’s still not back, but she’s usually not back before midnight.

“So, uh, I have these dreams? I don’t know if you’ve noticed—“

“I have,” you say. It’s kinda hard to miss when he uses you like a pillow almost all day.

“Uh. Sorry. But, well, I’m pretty sure they’re real? And I know that sounds a bit crazy, but I learn stuff that I couldn’t possibly know. It’s, uh, there’s twelve of us? And we’re all in different levels of the hemospectrum but that doesn’t really matter, we’re mostly all friends anyway, but we’re young, like, sometimes we’re six sweeps, and I haven’t seen any of us as older than eight. And sometimes it’s bits from our current lifetimes, like I had a dream about Meulin losing her lusus, and Dolorosa taking me from the caves, but that’s not actually what I wanted to talk about. In the ones where we’re all younger, none of us have adult names. So. Uh. I’m pretty sure I know your wriggler name? I learned Dolorosa’s from the dreams, and Redglare’s, and I’m pretty sure I know the empress’s, actually.”

You’re staring at him. You aren’t entirely sure if you believe him, but as far as you can tell, he’s not crazy. You wonder for a couple of seconds if this is some sort of elaborate trick to figure out your wriggler name, but dismiss it immediately. That really seems more like something Meulin would do, or maybe Redglare.

“I mean, I told Meulin, but that was before you showed up because the other-her and the other-you are at quadrant corners so I’m sorry but I didn’t actually know you at that point?  But, uh, it sort of felt… wrong, I guess? To know it and not tell you I knew it. Because I don’t know if you just don’t want us using it or if you don’t remember it or what.”

“I remember my name,” you say, somewhat cautious. Either he’s got really weirdly vivid dreams or he actually does have prophetic dreams of… what? Another life? You know some people believe in reincarnation, pointing at the eerie similarities between ancestor-descendant pairs, but you weren’t sure if you did or not.

“Oh. Uh, I guess you probably want us to not use it?” He looked almost – disappointed, really.

“It’th not that. It’th jutht- nobody’th called me by my wriggler name for thweepth. Are you thure it’th the right name, though?”

“Redglare said the one I got for her was right, and honestly I find it hard to believe that there’s a lot of trolls that have two sets of horns and a lisp, so it’s probably right.” He seems a bit less sad, now, but it’s still there.

“You thaid thith other Meulin and I were quadrant cornerth?” You really wished the corner was Kankri, but, well, that would be too good.

“Yeah, uh, an indigo blood. You were his moirail, Meulin was his matesprit.”

“What about you?” You’re caught between wanting him to take that as meaning  _ what were you to him _ , and wanting to know about him in general.

“Uh.” He shuffles from side to side, knotting his hands in the hem of his sweater, “My quadrants were pretty much empty.” He seems sort of embarrassed by that, and the “pretty much” modifier gave you doubt about empty they actually were.

“I want to tell people,” he says. You start, and he hurriedly says, “Not your name, or anything really specific about the dreams, just—the hemospectrum shouldn’t be as big of a deal as it is. It’s really not as much of a difference as people make it out to be? It’s literally just… colors. Beneath our skin and in our eyes. It doesn’t mean that anyone’s better than anyone else.”

“That’th athking a lot of people,” you say, hesitant. “They aren’t going to want to change their entire perthpective becauthe thome mutant blood cometh along and thayth they thhould.”

“I know. I want to try, though. I’m going to wait until after Redglare graduates. She wants to help however she can, but, well, she’s a lot more visible than us. Uh,” he colors, the tips of his ears flushing. You hadn’t noticed it before, but he’s got some tiny, half-formed fins at the bottom of his ears. They’re kind of more adorable than fins have any right to be. “Are you and Redglare…” He flushes harder, sort of making a clumsy heart with his fingers.

You can’t help it, you start laughing. “Theriouthly, KK?” you say around your helpless laughter. “Redglare’th already got a matethprit.” He looks profoundly confused, so you elaborate for him. “Dolorotha and Redglare are practically bound, KK. How have you not noticed?”

“I try not to pay attention to my lusus’s lovelife! Oh, that’s actually really weird. Psii, what the fuck?”

You’ve never really heard him swear before, and it makes the already hysterical scene even funnier to you. Kankri apparently has weird prophetic dreams, knows your wriggler name, apparently an alternate you was pale for an indigo blood, and Kankri somehow hadn’t noticed how blatantly flushed Dolorosa and Redglare were. You laugh long enough and hard enough that you have to sit down, leaning against the wall with a hand practically stuffed into your mouth so your laughter isn’t too loud.

Kankri looks equal parts amused and worried, sitting down on the floor next to you. “Psii, are you okay?” he asks, trying hard to bite back his own laughter.

“Don’t ever change,” you say, in between wheezing breaths and laughter. You pull him closer to you, and he fits himself in the space under your arm, rubbing your back in what you think is an attempt to get you to calm down.

Once your laughter has petered out, while you’re still breathing hard, he sort of half smiles up at you and says, “Would you come with me, if I went to tell people?”

“Of courthe,” you say. What other choice do you have? You could leave, but fuck if you haven’t gotten attached to this small group of wonderfully insane trolls.

“Thank you, Mituna,” he says. His voice is practically a whisper, but it somehow manages to take your breath away more than your laughter did. You’d locked yourself in the ablutions chamber one night, when Dolorosa and Redglare and Meulin and Kankri were out, repeating your wriggler name to yourself in the mirror. It never sounded right, like it was really you, no matter how many times you said it. Somehow, the way he said it – maybe the inflection, maybe the tone, maybe the fact that it was him – made it sound more like a name that belonged to you now, as opposed to a name that had been abandoned at the same time you had to learn to fly without the wind in your hair.

Your name is PSIIONIIC, and you are completely and utterly flushed – and probably more than a little bit pale – for this disaster of a troll.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Questions, comments, concerns, feel free to shout at me in the comments section. Thank you for reading, and I'll be back on Friday with another chapter!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is the last chapter in what I've got marked off as "Part One," which is a little odd 'cause it's about half the fic. So yeah, roughly halfway point wordcount-wise! Posted way earlier in the day than usual because odds are I won't have time later. Thanks to concernedWallflower24 for betaing this, as usual, and thanks for reading!

The calm couldn’t last forever, of course. You wake up one morning to Kankri, shaking you gently awake and saying, “We gotta go, we’ve been here too long anyway.” It’s been a couple perigees by now, and really, you’re well enough that you could leave. But you won’t, not without them.

It sort of scares you how much you care for this ragtag group, but you wouldn’t change it for the world.

You carry a few bags down the tree, straps slung over your shoulders while your hands grip the sides of the ladder. You never did get to go skateboarding with Redglare. Maybe next time, you say to yourself. Of course there’ll be a next time.

When you glance back up at the treehive, Redglare and Dolorosa are standing in the window. Dolorosa is taller than Redglare, by several inches, and has to duck down a little for what you assume is a kiss. They stand there for a few seconds before Dolorosa untangles herself from Redglare’s arms and climbs down the ladder to sit in the front of the cart, hands gripping the wheel and eyes sad but determined.

You spend most of this cart ride reading through a coding book you got Redglare to give you, tucked into a corner of the cart. Meulin and Kankri are quietly discussing something about honking. You aren’t sure you want to know.

Halfway through the trip, though, Kankri falls asleep in a tangle of blankets. Meulin turns to stare at you, expression contemplative. “You’ve really started filling out again. I mean, you’ll pawbably always be a stick, but you defurnatly look healthier now.” Her nose wrinkles up a bit as her face splits into a grin, “Not exactly my type, but I can see it.”

You sort of splutter at her, dropping your book and almost losing your page number in your resulting attempt to catch it, but manage to pull yourself back together. “You don’t go for the gangly thing?”

“Eh,” she says, “I’m a bit more fur the ‘idiots who won’t talk about their feelings’ type, really.”

“We talk about feelingth,” you say, defensive.

“All of them but the actually impurrtant ones, you mean.”

You resort to hiding your rapidly coloring face in your coding book. It doesn’t work very well, since she takes that as an invitation to slide into the spot against the side between you and Kankri, who’s still dead to the world. “What are you even reading?” she says, peeking over your shoulder. She frowns at the lines of printed code that are, currently, showing you how to make a display window in ^cake. “None of this makes sense.”

“It’th jutht ^cake,” you say. It’s pronounced like “carrot cake.” You honestly had worked with this one before, but figured it was a good spot as any to get back into coding, and, anyway, you missed a good two dozen versions. “It’th like… a beginner coding language.”

“There’s like… curley lines. And boxy lines. What does this do?” Meulin’s eyebrows, slim and short to begin with, are knotted up while she tries – and fails – to make sense of anything on the page.

“It openth another window that you can thet thingth to dithplay on. Nothing thuper advanced.”

“Well, I can’t make heads or tails of it.” She turns slightly, leaning back on you and propping her feet up on Kankri, who doesn’t even notice. She snickers, wiggling her feet in his lap. “I think if I had to smush myself into any single clawdrant with this guy, I’d probably go crazy.”

Well. Okay. You’d noticed the quadrant flipping, but didn’t know they were sorta official about it? “Pleathe tell me you don’t have a thchedule.”

“Naah. It’s not really something you can plan you, you know?” Not really. But you nod along anyway.

“Where are we going?” You peer out the side of the cart, noting that the road is completely deserted except for you and the others.

“Uhhh. Mom? Where are we going?” Meulin directs her question at the front of the cart, where Dolorosa is sitting, guiding the cart.

“We are going to an old friend of mine, from the caves. She is retired now, and lives far enough away from anything major that she doesn’t get many visitors.” Dolorosa rearranges one of the gauzy, jade drapes that are part of her dress so that it’s not falling off her seat anymore. “Her name is Lianii Kreeve.”

Okay then. You’ve got no idea who that is, but you think you’ll probably find out. You settle back in to wait, reading your coding book some more while you do. You make it through another chapter and a half, and when you look up again to check on your companions, Meulin’s fallen asleep on Kankri, using his lap as a pillow. He’s still completely asleep. You smile fondly at them. You really, really like them. Not just Kankri, specifically, but Meulin, too. She’s blunt, straightforward  in a way that Kankri completely bypasses for “takes like five minutes to say good morning because he’s rambling again.”

Not that you dislike it. It’s sort of endearing, if really annoying sometimes. Like when he took somewhere around ten minutes to try and explain where you were going today, but  _ still _ didn’t manage to actually answer the question. Meulin’s bluntness is refreshing. She gets to the point, she doesn’t usually soften the blow.

It’s better than the worried dancing around certain subjects Kankri does.

She’d actually walked up to you, your third day at Redglare’s hive, and said, “So. Being a ship’s battery probably sucked.”

You’d laughed, really laughed, for the first time in what felt like forever. “Yeah,” you’d said. “Yeah it did.”

And that had been it. She’d occasionally asked you about the places you flew over, and you told her what you knew, but she didn’t weave around the subject.

You look up to the front of the cart, to find Dolorosa smiling at you, fangs peeking in between jade-painted lips. “I would warn you not to hurt my grubs, but somehow, I suspect they could do far more to hurt you than you could them.”

That’s… probably more true than you’d like to admit. You nod at her, smiling a little in a way you’re almost certain is unbearably sappy, and put your book down. Maybe you’ll take a nap too, since you’re sure it’ll be hours before you make it to Dolorosa’s friend’s hive.

Shuffling over closer to where Kankri and Meulin are, you lean your head on top of Kankri’s and just sort of stare down at where Meulin is sleeping before falling asleep yourself.

When you wake up from a surreal dream that somehow was split, one part in purple, one in yellow, and both sides were just you, flying over an endless city, you’re the one laying in Kankri’s lap while he sort of flops onto your back. Honestly, that doesn’t seem like it would be terribly comfortable, but, well, he’s still out. And you’re sort of trapped.

It’s not terribly uncomfortable, it’s mostly just warm, since he’s basically surrounding you. Meulin is awake, leaning against the other side of the cart, grinning at you. You start to sit up, but give up when he makes a quiet noise of protest and presses his nose into your back.

You manage a quiet conversation with Meulin without waking him up, but when the cart comes to an abrupt stop as Dolorosa steps on the breaks, Kankri sits up with a sort of annoyed mumble, rubbing one of his eyes. You sit up too, looking out to what made Dolorosa stop.

There’s a plume of smoke, light against the dark sky. Dolorosa’s hands hang limply on the seat beside her, head pointed straight ahead at the faintly smoking wreckage in front of you. Meulin sniffs at the air and says, “I don’t think whoefur did this is here anymore.”

“Lianii,” Dolorosa breathes, getting out of the cart as fast as she can and running towards the ruined hive. It was, at one point, a decent size, with what looks like the remains of arched windows and doors. There isn’t actually anything left but a charred frame, though. It smells like burnt ozone.

“There wath a pthionic,” you say. Probably a slave. Possibly fed mind honey, a drug whose rush of power is uncontrollable and, with enough use, addicting. You avoid it as much as you can. You aren’t sure you want to get out of the cart, but when you hear Dolorosa’s distressed shout, you and Kankri go running after her.

She’s in the middle of one of the ruined rooms, kneeling next to what looks like a body, half-melted by some psionic’s beam. The horns are visible, one side a graceful curl around where an ear would be and the other wraps around the back of her skull, almost but not quite tangled with the other.

“She’s dead,” Kankri says, somewhat unnecessarily. “Psii, she’s dead.”

“I know.” Meulin is poking around in the wreckage, looking for clues as to what might have done this. When you turn away from the body to do the same, you’re confronted with writing, scrawled along the edge of the ruined door arch in dark jade.

Your hands clench, and you can feel static building between your horns.  _ That’s _ what this is about? The sharp intake of breath next to you tells you, yeah, Kankri saw it too. “Dolorotha,” you say. “You need to thee thith.”

She comes to stand next to you, hands shaking in a way that you’re careful not to stare at too long. It’s not much of an issue since you’re too busy staring at the angry letters painted onto the arch.

MUTANT HARBORER

Kankri, in a tiny voice, says, “This is my fault.”

“No,” you say. You’re furious. You don’t even know this woman. The only thing she’d done wrong was let her friends stay with her. Why does the empire ruin  _ everything? _ First the goddamned psionic training, then the fucking ship, now this? Ruining this new group you’ve found yourself in, this  _ family _ – and you  _ hate  _ it.

Not the vaguely annoyed hate you have for burnt food, or being woken up by someone’s limb poking you in the face, nor the hot surge of black feelings you haven’t really felt for anyone in any form since before the whole ship thing. No, it’s closer to the hatred you have for being cooped up, mixed with a surge of protectiveness.

You’re not going to let them take Kankri or Meulin or Rosa from you.

“Psii,” Kankri says, “Psii, you’re sparking.”

Your psionics are, in fact, sparking, glowing red and blue between your fingers and horns, and in your hair. “Thorry,” you say. Kankri reaches out to slip a hand into yours, your psionics playing between your fingers and his. “It’th not your fault.”

“But she died because she helped us. Me.” Meulin’s on his other side, fingers linked with him, too.

“She was  _ killed, _ ” Meulin emphasizes. “If they didn’t have you as an excuse, they would have found something else.”

“But my blood color played into it.” Kankri’s hand tightens around yours. “Maybe—maybe if I started telling people about my dreams earlier, maybe this wouldn’t have happened—“ he cuts off, dropping to the ground and pulling you and Meulin with him. “We should.”

The three of you turn into a tangle of arms, both you and Meulin unwilling to let go of Kankri’s hands while still attempting to hug him. Dolorosa is still staring at the writing on the arch. You’re pretty sure it was written with Lianii’s blood, which is a thought you are  _ not  _ going to voice to Kankri. Maybe to Meulin, later. She’s had more experience with blood.

You look up to see Dolorosa’s fists clenched hard enough that her nails bite into her palms. “We have to leave here. They might come back,” she says, although she doesn’t move. You, Meulin, and Kankri don’t move from your tangle on the ground, either. It’s silent for a few more beats, before Dolorosa whispers, “I wish we could bury her, but we don’t have the time or the equipment.”

That? That you can help with.

You untangle yourself from the Meulin-and-Kankri knot and get to your feet, still holding onto Kankri’s hand. Your arm stretches behind you as you shuffle slightly closer to Dolorosa. “I can dig a hole? With my pthionicth?”

She nods at you, so you spend a few seconds finding a spot big enough to make a decent grave on. You levitate enough dirt out of the ground, and enough of the wreckage away, that there’s enough space for the partially melted corpse to be buried. It’s not very deep, but it’s better than nothing.

Dolorosa picks up the corpse with gentle hands, although her eyes are flashing with rage. She lays it down in the grave and nods for you to fill it again. She smears a sleeve over her face, and whispers something low enough that you miss it while you’re filling the hole. When the last piece of dirt is back in its place, she turns away.

“We need to leave,” she says again.

Meulin pulls Kankri to his feet, leaning over to press a kiss to his cheek. “It’s not your fault,” she says. “I purromise.”  You squeeze his hand –  _ he’s holding your hand _ – and follow them as they follow Dolorosa to the cart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments, concerns, questions, random screaming about Wonder Woman, feel free to share in the comments section. I'll be back on Monday with the next chapter!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter six! Ft. a few of my fantrolls mostly for fun, they're not actually super important. As usual, thanks to concernedWallflower24 for betaing, and also thanks to mightyWolf1029 (who doesn't have an account on ao3) for betaing too! Earlier chapters now have some minor edits because I apparently can't spell. Whoops.  
> I also have no idea how to format pesterlogs on AO3 so sorry about that.

The next few perigees are spent helping Kankri preach. He introduces himself as Signless, and you’re careful to call him that in public. Meulin – Disciple – sits in among the people and writes down what he says – shouts – to them. Dolorosa haunts the back of the room, making sure people who might come back later to hurt him, or tell the subjugglers, don’t. You don’t ask how.

You’re the more visible “muscle.” For a value of muscle that mostly means standing up front, behind him and to his right, and sparking threateningly at anyone who gets too close. For the most part, the audience you get is low bloods, with the occasional teal coming in with a quadrant. There was a brief moment of panic when a blue blood came in one day, but he simply sat in a corner near Dolorosa and listened, occasionally writing something down on a notepad. Kankri was thrilled.

“That was Horuss,” he whispers excitedly to Meulin that night. “He dated a brown blood, in his other life.”

You find yourself staying up, past when he and Meulin are asleep. What if someone does go to the subjugglers? What if someone tries to get to Kankri, and you or Meulin or Dolorosa can’t make it in time?

You spend a lot of days staring into Kankri’s hair, thinking like this.

That also means you spend a lot of nights standing behind him, trying to stay as awake as possible while also sparking threateningly enough to discourage attackers but not enough to scare away those who actually want to listen.

You also drink a lot of coffee.

You know you aren’t the only one worrying. Dolorosa disappears, some days, and comes back in the morning with blood under her nails that she carefully removes. You don’t think she’s talked to Redglare for weeks. Meulin fills journal after journal with the words Kankri speaks, but paces restless circles around whatever room you’re staying in. Kankri makes meticulous outlines of what he wants to talk about next, and ends up abandoning them halfway through.

The number of people that come slowly increases. The first few times, there’s maybe five people on average. More people come, bringing their moirails or their matesprits or their kismesis. Several black pairs appear to make a date of it, asking questions after the main speech part and arguing over the response.

Kankri manages to answer their questions with way more patience than you would have. No, he doesn’t mean that we should kill all the high bloods. No, it doesn’t mean that we’re going to flip the hemospectrum, either.

You don’t know how he does it.

When you visit a town with a larger psionic population than normal, you step a little further than you usually do from him, trusting that Meulin and Dolorosa are still keeping an eye on him. There’s a lightning-horned psionic standing slightly off to the side, holding the hand of a troll you assume is her matesprit. The psionic is a yellow blood, like you, with bright yellow-green and pink eyes, and her matesprit is a rust blood.

“What happens?” she asks. “What happens when they take you? Did you go?” She buzzes her s’s, white teeth peeking from between yellow-painted lips.

“I went. It’th not pleathant. If you have a place you can go inthtead, go.” You deliberate for a second before pushing your sleeve up enough to reveal the first of the series of scars on your arm. “Thethe are from the thhip I wath ‘atthigned’ on.”

Her grip on her matesprit’s hand visibly tightens, knuckles whitening. “I don’t want to pilot a ship. Is that the only thing they have trained psionics do?”

You smile bitterly at her as you tug your sleeve down again, remembering the burnt rubble of Dolorosa’s friend’s hive. “Thome thubjuggler troupeth have pthionicth with them. Or conthruction.” She visibly wilts. “Do you have thomewhere you can go?”

“Maybe. I’ll- I’ll have to check. Har, maybe Fen’s matesprit? Oh—sorry – I’m Lizbit, by the way. Uh. No adult name, yet. This is Harmen.” Her friend waves her free hand at you. She has pronged horns and fangs that poke out from between red-painted lips. “Thank you. Um, I don’t know how often you get on Trollian, but if you get the chance, I’m under algorithmicParatonnerre. Here, let me-“ she feels around in one of her pockets, pulling out a tiny notepad covered in mathematic symbols, scribbles it down. “I understand if you don’t have time or something, but, well, I don’t really have many psionic friends, and you’re sort of a huge inspiration? Like, you got out. You’re doing something to change all this.”

You take the proffered paper. You’re not tearing up, you swear, there’s just a static-haired girl who apparently looks up to you and you have no idea how to deal with this. “Thank you.” You’re not going to tell her you have no idea what you’re doing.

After they leave, Kankri wanders over to where you are. Most of the people are gone, with only a couple stragglers flipping through Meulin’s book. “You’ve got fans now?” he asks, teasing.

“I guetth?” You fold the paper carefully and slip it into your pocket. “They wanted help avoiding conthcription.”

“We should maybe set up some sort of network? There’s probably lots of trolls who need to get out of conscription, because they’d get culled, or enslaved, or they don’t want to.”

“Let me handle thome of that,” you say. He’s been working himself way too hard.

“No, I’ll—“

“Thignletth. I’ve got it.”

“No, really, I—“

“Can get an extra hour of thleep if I work on this, yeah.” You really wish he would sleep more, and not just because you still spend an inordinate amount of time watching him sleep.

He’s starting to get bags under his eyes.

When the four of you get back to the small hive you’re staying at – actually owned by a no-nonsense brown blood and her teal blood moirail – you find the slip of paper in your pocket. Meulin’s checking over today’s sermon with Kankri, verifying that she managed to get it down right. You get out your husktop – you actually broke your palmtop a while ago, and haven’t fixed it or gotten a new one – and open Trollian.

You type in Lizbit’s handle, and contact her.

 

\--twainArtifices [TA] started trolling algorithmicParatonnerre [AP]!—

TA : thii2 ii2 psiioniic

AP : Hold on juzt a minute

While you wait for her to get back, Kankri slides next to you, propping his head on your arm. “You’re messaging that girl from the meeting,” he says, nudging you with a horn.

“I want to make thure that thhe’th got thomewhere to go,” you say. Your husktop dings as she messages you.

AP : Zorry about that

TA : no problem

TA : diid you find 2omewhere two hiide from the con2criiptiion

AP : My matezprite’z auzpicee’z got some connectionz

AP : He’z friendz with a minor heirezz

AP : Not even cloze to the actual official heirezz zpot or whatever but zhe’z got zome pull

 

That surprises you. From what you know, most people aren’t at quadrant corners (once removed?) with heiresses of any sort. Last count that you heard on a news site was somewhere around fifty trolls with fuchsia blood, including the Empress herself.

 

TA : iif you need any help ii can be contacted on thii2 account

TA : we miight not be clo2e enough two get there iin per2on but we can probably get 2omeone two help

AP : Cool, thankz

AP : Zame for over here, though

AP : If you have zomeone near uz that needz help

 

Kankri’s peering over your shoulder – around your shoulder – and sort of nuzzles into you before catching himself and leaning away. Meulin takes this as an invitation to slide into the new space between you, stealing the husktop.

 

TA : XOO < Hello!

AP : Uh

TA : :33 < You’re Psii’s new furiend?

AP : I guezz?

TA : :33 < Good! He should talk to someone mew he doesn’t live with furom time to time.

AP : Are you… Dizciple? The one who waz writing everything down?

TA : :33 < Got it in one!

 

There’s a brief scuffle, and you end up pushing her out of the way with your psionics and snatching your husktop back.

 

TA : sorry d2 took my hu2ktop

AP : It’z fine

AP : I’m packing up my ztuff right now, I have to go

AP : Thankz again

TA : no problem

 

That didn’t go too badly, you don’t think. Another psionic, safe – although she probably would have made it to safety on her own, with quadrant… corner corners? That could exercise some sort of pull to keep her safe. Meulin shuts your husktop, saying, “Come on! We’re supposed to go to a purrty!”

You’re not sure you want to go to a party, and tell her as much. She laughs at you, digging around in your clothes pile for something she deems as acceptable. “Think of it as pawblic relations,” she says. You narrowly avoid having a button-down shirt with your symbol worked into a black and yellow design on it hanging from your horns, and fail to dodge the dark pants that hit you in the face. They’re the annoyingly tight ones, too. When you make a face at her, she doesn’t seem to notice. She’s already stealing Kankri’s cloak, dancing away with it, eyes flashing with laughter.

Kankri’s eyebrows are furrowed in indignation, grabbing at the cloak she’s holding just far enough away that he can’t reach it. “Meulin, give me my cloak back!” He’s wearing those leggings of his, the ones that go up onto his chest. His shoulders are bare, though, faint musculature flexing as he reaches.

“Nope! You’re going to wear something other than this cloak for the furst time in weeks!”

“I don’t—“

“You do.”

You slip out of the room and go to change. Yeah, the pants are still annoyingly tight, and don’t even have the give leggings do. The button-down’s sleeves are comfortingly long, though, and cover halfway down your hands. When you get back, Meulin’s in the process of pulling on a tank top over her head, back muscles flexing. Kankri’s staring resolutely at the wall slightly to her right, face coloring.

Disciple did get him out of the cloak, but you’re pretty sure he’s wearing his ridiculous pants still. Except with a dark grey sweater, with bright red around the edges of the sleeves, over it. Meulin’s got a sleeveless top on now, with an olive halter top that loops around in her symbol.  She spins around as she finishes pulling it over her stomach. She then looks between you and Kankri – who’s still blushing – and nods to herself. “Let’s go,” she says, grabbing your hand and Kankri’s hand and tugging you towards the door.

“Does Mom know we’re leaving?” Kankri asks, whining a little. He doesn’t like parties, and, to be perfectly honest, you don’t either. The ones Meulin likes are usually loud enough to hurt your ears, and crowded enough that you usually end up in a corner, or hiding behind the food table. You try to avoid going, but, well, Meulin can be very persuasive.

“We’ll be back before she is,” Meulin says, leading you and Kankri out of the house and through various alleyways. She ducks through a low doorway and into a party that’s substantially calmer than the ones she usually drags you to. There’s only a few flashing lights, some of which you’re fairly certain are just psionics blinking, not any sort of mood lighting. The music isn’t loud enough that it’ll be painful, but it is loud enough to drown out any casual conversation that isn’t conducted at a whisper’s distance or at a half shout. Kankri immediately finds a table to hide out at, though.

Meulin pouts at him before wandering out to join the undulating crowd. She disappears within seconds, melting into the throng. You take the seat next to Kankri, and he shoots a fond, exasperated smile at you. He leans up and over, saying in your ear, “I can’t believe she actually dragged us out here.”

“I don’t like thethe pantth,” you admit, turning so you can talk to him without craning your neck at an awkward angle or trying to compete with the music.

He opens his mouth to say something, then turns bright red, pulling the neck of his sweater up to cover his face in a mostly unsuccessful attempt to hide it. He’s resolutely staring into the crowd, so you try to peer out to see what he’s staring at, but you can’t find anything.

The two of you sit there in silence – partially because now it’s sort of awkward, and partially because it’s still loud enough that it’s hard to converse in any normal tone of voice while still maintaining your personal space. Meulin bounces back over to the two of you, hauling Kankri to his feet by the hand and dancing him in a little circle around where you’re sitting.

Her eyes are blown wide and she’s giggling. Someone probably bought her a drink at some point while she was off in the crowd. She stops spinning Kankri around, dropping him dizzy and grinning into his chair before sitting down, too.

In your lap.

“I think I’m done dancing around the issue,” she says, a faint sweet smell on her breath. Her lips press onto yours, cool and soft. You hear someone squeak, and aren’t sure if it’s Kankri or you.

Before you can figure out if you should be kissing back or wrapping your arms around her or doing anything other than just sitting there like a dumbstruck fool, she’s out of your lap and pressing a kiss to Kankri’s lips, too, before grinning and announcing, “You two need to stop it too!” before bouncing off again into the crowd.

You reach up and press a couple of fingers to your lips. What the heck just happened. You look over at Kankri, and he looks at least twice as surprised as you do, bright red flush coloring his mostly-hidden ears.

You’ve got a small crush on Meulin. You’ve got a larger one on Kankri. Evidently she… also likes you and Kankri? Kankri mostly just looks confused and flustered right now. You lose track of time, sitting there with two fingers pressed to your lips and watching Kankri try to process what just happened.

His mouth is sort of hanging half open, and when Meulin bounces back over, pulls you up by both hands, and spins around you, he shuts it. There would be an audible snap, if it wasn’t quite so loud. “Come dance!” she says, laughing.

 _Alright,_ you think. Maybe it won’t be as bad this time? You really don’t like the crush of crowds, but maybe it’ll be different. You’ll try, anyway, for her.

You don’t really know how to dance, but you make a half-hearted effort to keep up with Meulin’s excited, slightly inebriated, bouncing in time to the music. It goes well enough for the first couple of minutes, but then someone runs into you from behind, and you almost trip over a shoe abandoned on the dance floor, and someone’s elbow pokes you in the side and suddenly you can’t breathe. Everyone’s too close to you, the atmosphere going heavy and dense. The sound of your own rapid breathing is drown out by the music, and you can feel your hands go cold and clammy in Meulin’s. She catches your eye, noticing your expression and instantly leading you out of the crowd. “Sorry, sorry,” she says. “I shouldn’t have push—“

“I’m—“ _fine_. You’ve decided you really don’t want to do this again. Kankri’s appeared by your side from somewhere, and they manage to get you to a couch, tucked into a corner of the room. Your hands are shaking. You struggle to take in enough air, pushing Meulin’s hands away from your own. “Thpace—“

She backs off, pulling Kankri with her. “What do you need?” She’s dead serious, watching you with grey eyes, holding Kankri’s arm so he doesn’t rush you.

You shake your head, trying your best to breathe deeply. You bury your face in your arms, aware of the sparks you’re throwing off from your horns. _Why?_ Your thoughts balance on the edge between hysteria and panic, and you mentally smack yourself. Why did you think this was a good idea? Ever? You need to get out of this building, shut off from the moons. You don’t even bother walking – the sensible decision, the one that would draw the least attention – and fly out the door, practically throwing yourself into the sky.

Out, out _, out._ You fly upwards, crackling with psionic energy. The sky’s cloudy enough that you can’t see the stars, you _need_ to get to them. You fly straight through the cloud cover, pausing in the center of a cloud. It’s damp, and cold, and they can probably see the cloud lighting up with blue and red lightning, but you _don’t care._ Your clothes are going to be soaked by the water vapor condensing on you and your hair is plastered to your skull, and there’s water dripping off your fingertips and nose.

You fly out the top of the cloud, staring out at the slowly moving cloud tops, and at the stars and moons above them. Everything is lit up, faintly tinted green by one of the moons. You breathe out, shaky, eyes frozen open and lungs protesting the thin air. It’s silent, and the sky is laid out before you. _I could go,_ you think. _Just leave. Don’t look back._ You won’t, though.

It’s cold, and you’re wet, and it’s not comfortable, but at this point, you don’t really _want_ to be comfortable, but it’s wide, and open, and something about the chill in the air feels clean and fresh. You stand there, breathing in the frost, until you’ve lost track of time and the moons are close to the horizon.

You duck back down below the cloud layer. Landing on a rooftop, you tap the pocket for the palmtop that _should_ be there. If you hadn’t broken it a week ago. Well, fuck. You don’t want to go back to where the party was, but knowing Meulin and Kankri, they’re looking for you. You look around on the rooftop, and duck down to land in an alleyway. As you’re wandering onto the main part of the street, a jade blood bumps into you.

He immediately colors and looks like he wants to apologize and shout at you in the same breath, antenna-like horns and curly hair only coming up to your chest. His eyes flicker up towards your face, then back down at his palmtop, which, from what you can tell, is opened to Trollian. The bright highlighter yellow text is familiar, but you can’t quite place it.

“Uh… Psiioniic?” he says, and your facial expression must betray your surprise because he huffs a sigh and says, “Fucking hell, man. Half the people I know are looking for you. Liz says hi, by the way.”

That’s why the yellow was familiar. It’s the girl from before, Lizbit. “Could you patth a metthage through telling them I’m alright? And, uh, tell them where we are?”

“Yeah, sure,” he says, typing away distractedly. His facial expression flickers through varying levels of annoyance and anger. “Kinda ruins the whole aloof mystery thing you guys have going when you get really fucking lost and have to get people to help find you.”

A glance at his palmtop shows a memo, with lines of text in shades all over the hemospectrum, messages pinging new shades along the bottom. He’s quiet, and when he switches over to a chat that’s entirely filled with a jade color you’re pretty sure is his and a bluish shade, you turn your attention to the road.

It’s sort of awkward, and you’re now one hundred percent certain that this was not the best idea you’ve ever had. What if Meulin, or worse, Kankri, was mad at you? Meulin didn’t brood, she’d tell you straight up if she was mad. Kankri would just withdraw, and it would end up being one of those passive-aggressive “who can avoid the other the longest” not-fights. Those are more exhausting than any fight with Meulin.

Meulin. She kissed you. And Kankri. You’re also fairly certain she was a bit drunk on some drink someone got her, and that should probably get talked about at some point, but right now you just want to go home, and maybe change your clothes.

The jade blood taps you on the arm, saying, “Maybe you should try to wring yourself out some? You’re a mess. And,” he nods towards one of the ends of the street, “I’m pretty sure your person is here.”

That’s all the warning you get before Kankri comes into view. When he sees you, too, he breaks into a run, slowing down at the last second and pulling you into a hug, one that’s loose enough that if you wanted to, you could pull away. When instead, you lean in closer and wrap your arms around him, too, he tightens his grip.

“Meulin’s with Mom,” he murmurs into your chest.  You hum in acknowledgement, resting your chin between his horns. “You’re soaking wet. What did you do?”

“Cloud,” you say. You’ve mostly stopped dripping, but you’re shivering anyway, and he’s really warm. “Uh. Where are we?”

“No idea. I can get us home, though. We should go.” Despite saying this, he doesn’t move yet, opting instead to tighten his grip around your waist. “I’d say don’t do it again, but I don’t want to trap you.” His voice is quiet, and out of the corner of your eye you can see the jade blood slipping away back down the alleyway.

“Thank you.” You can’t resist pressing a pale kiss to the top of his head. You know he notices, because his face heats up against you and he mumbles something unintelligible into your chest.

When Kankri eventually detangles himself from you, though, his face is mostly back to normal, if still a little red high on his cheeks. He pulls his sweater over his head and reaches up to tug it over you. He doesn’t manage to get your arms through it, though, so they’re pinned to your sides.

You struggle to get it off your head, but since he’s still fussing with it, it ends up actually _on_ you, instead of back on him, as you had intended. The front part is a bit damp, and it’s inside out, but it’s warm and soft around you. “You—“

“Aren’t completely soaked and shivering, yeah. Psii, you’re wearing the sweater.” It’s too big on you, too wide, and not long enough, but it’s warm. He links his fingers with yours, saying, “Let’s go home, ‘tuna,” and you let him lead you through the streets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be back on Friday with a new chapter! Thanks for reading, and, as usual, if you have any comments, questions, or concerns, feel free to say something in the comments.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to concernedWallflower24 and MightyWolf1029 for betaing! I'd like to take this moment to reiterate that nobody will be dying in this fic, because I am a giant sucker for happy endings and oh boy did that not happen in canon.

Meulin attacks you with a towel when you got home. She’s on her tiptoes, rubbing at your head with it, when she stops and frowns at you. “You’re a mess.”

You shrug in response. You can’t actually argue that, but you  _ can _ pull a twig out of her hair and bounce it off her cheek, because, in all honesty, you’re all messes.

Dolorosa’s gotten your sleep clothes from somewhere, and hands them to you. “Go change,” she says.

You decide, for future reference, to never get these pants wet again. It takes you a good five minutes to get out of the stiff, damp fabric, since they managed to get stuck around your hips, knees, and ankles. Maybe you should set them on fire? They’re too wet, though, and you have no idea how well the fabric would burn.

You pull Kankri’s sweater over your head and then unbutton your shirt, standing there and shivering slightly before putting on the sleep clothes Dolorosa gave you. Soft, loose pants and a tank top, but you’re still cold enough to put the sweater back on over it, at least for now.

When you come out of the ablutions chamber, Dolorosa is sitting on the couch – which only has the cushion she is currently using on it – sewing on something. The brown blood that owns the house sticks her head in, hair knotted around her curly horns, and decides to go back to bed in lieu of attempting to deal with the newly-formed pile of cushions and towels and blankets that Kankri and Meulin must have made while you weren’t there.

Kankri isn’t there, though, so you sit down by Meulin. “Hey,” you say.

“Kan’s kind of in love with you.”

“I—what?” You can feel yourself going yellow. This is a thing. This is very much a thing that is happening.

“He’s also in love with me. And I like both of you, and I  _ know _ you have a thing for him, and am like halfway purrtain you have a thing for me, too, and don’t really see why we should be dancing around this anymore.”

“I—no—“ You thought you were being  _ subtle. _

“You  _ yes. _ Him yes. Me yes.  All of us yes.” You glance up at Dolorosa, but the tiny smile on her lips says that you’re not getting any help from that corner.

“I don’t—“ you fumble with words for a second, before saying, “I’m not okay. By any thtretch of the imagination. I thtill wake up thinking I’m on the thhip thometimeth, I have teeth that get in the way of everything, I can’t deal with crowdth or enclothed thpaces. You thouldn’t have to deal with that.  _ He _ thouldn’t have to deal with that.”

“Kan’s got dreams about an alternate reality where we all get blown up by Her Impurrial Fish-face. I spent several perigees wearing the dead body of my lusus. I also happen to  _ like _ your teeth. And your lisp. It’s cute. Besides,” she smiles, soft, with only a hint of teeth, “Isn’t it really up to us, if we want to deal with it?”

That makes you stop. Dolorosa quietly gets up, brushes down her skirts, and leaves with her sewing, smiling as she leaves. “I’m not thure if  _ I _ can deal with more complicationth right now,” you admit, quiet.

“That’s okay, too,” she says. “I can back off, and Kankri’s purrobably going to take furever to come out and say anything actually real. I just clawght you might like to know.”

“I—thank you. Yeth. That’th good.” You burrow sideways into the pile of blankets and cushions, still bright yellow. Kankri likes you. Meulin likes you. Well, okay, you already knew that bit, but this is  _ confirmation. _ With  _ words. _ And no alcohol.

You don’t really sleep much then, either, especially after Kankri comes back and curls between the two of you like that was exactly where he was always meant to be.

Weeks pass. The gatherings grow from tens to hundreds, crammed into every available inch of space. You start levitating him into the air so he can be seen, which has the added effect of letting everyone know that he is, in fact, protected.

Just in case.

You end up levitating yourself, too, and are careful to make sure you have at least two easily accessible escape routes. You get more headaches from using your psionics, but the fewer panic attacks because of the dark, close warehouses outweighs the downside.

He does insist you put him down after the actual speeches, though, so he can mingle more, with you hovering over his shoulder. He answers questions just as patiently as he did in the beginning, and gives medicine or blankets or food to those too low on the hemospectrum to have them readily available. There’s pupas, too, sometimes, younger than you, younger than him, with grey eyes and smaller lusus tucked in pockets or under arms, and slightly larger ones serving as a ride to and from.

You think those are probably your favorite, little trolls who haven’t had as much time to learn that the world’s a horrible place before being told it can be different. Ones who now know there’s something they can go to instead of the mandatory conscription of psionics, or that the jade bloods don’t have to go to the Caves, or, heck, purple bloods and upwards can have actual friends from other castes. They aren’t as common, but there’s some upper caste trolls who come to the meetings.

Kankri’s always really excited when they show up.

You aren’t really sure where Lizbit went, but you’ve been busy enough coordinating the other deserters to have much time to worry. You’ve only lost a couple, outside of maybe her, one actually dead and the other forced into subjuggler training. She still manages to get you bits and pieces of the patrol schedule, when she can.

Kankri’s movement grows stronger. You have to move between cities faster, more often, and spend longer out in the wilds between. There are a couple of raids that the four of you barely make it out of, only escaping because you managed to literally throw yourself, Kankri, Meulin, and Dolorosa out of the warehouse.

It’s completely exhausting, but there really isn’t any way to slow down.

It’s somewhere around two in the afternoon one day, and you’re still awake. Meulin and Kankri are dead asleep in the other room, but you’re standing in the kitchen contemplating making yourself a cup of coffee when Dolorosa comes in, empty teacup in hand.

She moves past you, to the ablution basin, and washes it out. “Hello, Psiioniic,” she says, a tiny smile curling her lips.

“Hi,” you say. Then some combination of exhaustion and caffeination – because you’d had two cups of coffee an hour ago – makes you ask, “How’th Redglare?”

“Redglare is—“ Dolorosa trails off, running the tip of one perfectly filed nail around her teacup. “Busy with school. I have not spoken to her recently.”

“Rotha? I’m going to call hoofbeatht shit on that.” She looks a little startled, her finger abruptly halting its circling. “Redglare’th alwayth got time for you.” And it’s true. When you’d stayed with Redglare, she  _ always _ made time to be with Dolorosa, no matter how much schoolwork she’d had.

Dolorosa is quiet at that, putting her cup back away. “I know,” she says, voice quiet. “But I cannot pull her into this even more than I already have.”

That isn’t all that far from your thought process, but- “At the rithk of being a hypocrite, I’m going to tell you thomething that Meulin told me. Ithn’t it up to her?”

She goes rigid for a second, luminescent skin flaring slightly before she seems to cave inward with a sigh. “Yes, it is.” She hugs you, just barely taller than you, and brushes your hair out of your face (again) with a hand. “Go to sleep, little one. I will contact Redglare when it is a more decent hour of the night.”

While you didn’t actually get any coffee, you figure it probably would be better to go to sleep. Sure, you’ve still got lots of stuff to do, but the trolls you need to contact are all also theoretically asleep, so there wouldn’t be much point in staying up later, anyway.

And Kankri makes this tiny  _ adorable _ sound when you slump into the pile, which totally has nothing to do with it. He doesn’t move away from Meulin, but he does sort of sleepily pull you closer to him, arms loosely curled around yours.

You’ll have to get up again in a few hours, because of course you will, but for now, it’s warm and, while not exactly safe, safe enough that you don’t feel the need to sleep in shifts. You brush some of Meulin’s hair off of Kankri’s shoulder, and doze off to the faint scent of cinnamon and growing things.

The blueblood from at least a perigee ago is back during a speech a few days later, with a notepad in hand. Meulin sits next to him, occasionally peeking over his shoulder. This one isn’t as crowded as some of the ones Kankri’s run, but it’s also in a smaller space.

You’re not standing, today, but instead perched on a half-wall a couple of paces behind him.

Rosa’s standing in the back, by the main entrance, shifting from foot to foot. This meeting is weird, too highblooded for this part of town and almost too quiet. The blue blood whispers something to Meulin, who jumps up and shouts, “Everybody out!”

You grab for Kankri with your psionics on instinct as everything erupts around you. Chairs fly, someone screams high and long and is cut off abruptly. You soar straight through the hole in the roof, towing Kankri behind you as he shouts something. You don’t stop, straight up into the air.

When you slow and hover just below a cloud, Kankri’s still shouting. “We can’t leave them!” he says, pain tight as red drips from somewhere under his cloak. You must not have gotten him out fast enough, and you cling tightly to him as he smacks at your shoulders. “We need to go back for ‘lin and Mom and we  _ can’t leave them _ . We can’t, ‘tuna.”

“I know! I know we can’t leave them. But did you thee how many there were? Becauthe I didn’t.”

Kankri’s silent for a minute, before sighing into your shoulder. “Too many. But we can’t just  _ leave _ them, Psii. We have to at least try to help.”

“If I drop you off thomewhere thafe, I can do a fly-by, thee if we might be able to pull thith off,” you say, a bit dubious. He just nods though, so you deposit him on top of the tallest hive stem you can find and fly back past the tiny warehouse you’d been in before.

They’ve got Rosa, but Meulin’s nowhere to be seen. There’s maybe a dozen of them, all blue blood or higher, even a seadweller or two. You probably won’t be able to take them. But maybe—

There’s bio-ports writhing after you, reaching, and you change course so you’re flying away as fast as you can, but they’re still gaining on you, and you can’t—you can’t—

They wrap around you, pulling you backwards and down and away from the sky and pulling at your clothes over your scars, and you  _ scream, _ blue and red beams erupting up into the stars, until a headpiece cuts them out and the ports vanish and you’re left shaking on the ground surrounded by highbloods.

You hate chucklevoodoos.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also I've never killed off a major character in anything I've written so there's that too. Thanks for reading, feel free to comment, and I'll be back next Monday with another chapter! :)


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the part where I branch out to other POVs, specifically Disciple's, here. Thanks to MightyWolf1029 and concernedWallflower for betaing!

Your name is MEULIN LEIJON, mostly known as THE DISCIPLE, and you are ON THE WARPATH.

You and Darkleer – silly, sweet, misguided and raised in a culture where he was taught what you know to be irrevocably wrong – got out fast, him sweating and you going cold-and-calculating like you need to in situations like this, like you’re hunting and not trying to stop your family from falling apart.

You get a dozen blocks away at a full-out sprint, and stop under a bridge to catch your breath and to push Darkleer into a wall, whisper-shouting, “Explain!”

He does. It’s slow, and a little stuttery, and he keeps having to wipe his face, but eventually he tells you what happened. He’s been coming to “the mutant preacher Signless’s” meetings as often as he could get himself put in the roster for spying on them – yeah, spying, you got yourself a defecting spy – and he’s been talking to you, and he’s been thinking that maybe he’s been wrong his whole life and he’s scared but he found out about the raid and he couldn’t let them get (you) Signless’s group.

You unfreeze, just a tiny bit, and hug him. He looks startled, like he hadn’t expected you to thank him for doing what he could.

And then you make him help you circle back some.

You rip a strip of cloth from your shirt – sorry, Mom – and use it to tie your hair into a ponytail on the very top of your head, so it hides your horns. It also gets in your face almost constantly, but that’ll make it harder for people to tell it’s you.

You get there in time to hear Psii scream, to see him crumple to the ground and a headpiece forced onto his face. Signless screams from a nearby rooftop, and there’s no way you can get to him before they do, so you grab for Darkleer’s hand and run.

Outside the town, it’s quiet, like nothing’s happened and nobody’s being hurt or tortured or whatever Her Imperial Fish-face is going to do to them. Probably make an example out of them.

Your hand clenches around Darkleer’s. You can’t let them do that. You’d do anything to keep them safe, and you have a sinking suspicion you’re not going to see them for a while, but you  _ will _ see them again.

Signless and Psii would be hopeless without you, after all. Can’t leave your boys alone, or they’ll keep doing the thing where they don’t talk about their problems. Or, you know, die.

You take Darkleer to Redglare’s house, where she answers the trapdoor and pulls you in quickly, eyes red and puffy with teal tear-tracks down her cheeks. She hugs you, her glasses off for one of the first times ever, and you hug her back as Darkleer awkwardly shifts behind you.

“Darkleer, this is Initiate Redglare,” you start, but she cuts you off.

“Neophyte. I’m officially graduated, not that it matters right now. Have you seen Rosa? Is she ok?”

You shake your head, hair flying around you. “I haven’t seen them since they were clawt. How’d you find out?”

She wordlessly turns her husktop to you. It’s the top story on every news site, no pictures, of course, not yet, but “DANGEROUS REBEL MUTANT CAUGHT” emblazoned in angry fuchsia along the top of every site she opens.

You take it from her, exiting out of every news site window she has open. You open a blank text document, and turn it back to her. “We’re going to fix this, and we don’t have a lot of time.”

The next two weeks are a flurry of planning, highly illegal websites, and Redglare teaming up with her arch nemesis.

Mindfang is an honest-to-goodness pirate, fancy hat and all, and it’s hysterical how much she and Redglare blackflirt. Since you told them they weren’t allowed to physically attack each other during planning sessions because you need to actually get things done, they’re pelting each other with crumpled up pieces of paper. Redglare’s trying to get as many as she can to land on Mindfang’s hat, while Mindfang is mostly trying to get them to land behind Redglare’s glasses.

Darkleer had drawn out where Empire forces were stationed – that he knew of. He’d also pointed out where they were probably holding Psii and Kankri and Rosa, but there was no way you could get there with your tiny force of a dozen pirates and two dozen assorted trolls. Most of whom were spread out over a decent chunk of the continent, so it wasn’t like you could just call everyone together quickly.

Mindfang is saying something about how you should “come at them from all eight sides” and you aren’t even certain where she’s talking about at this point, because there isn’t a single place that  _ has _ eight access points. Her Imperial Fish-face is more careful than that.

“Mindfang, there  _ aren’t _ eight ways into the Empress’s palace.” Redglare scoffs a little, arms crossed over her dragon cane.

“Yes, yes, but what about the sewer system? Or from above? Or with the food deliveries?”

She’s got one of the markers Darkleer’d been using before, sketching out the five regular routes in, and then circling the three she’d just suggested.

“We don’t have the numbers for that,” Redglare said, peering at them under her glasses. “Even counting us, that’s five people per route.”

Mindfang made a face, tossing the marker down again. “Then what can we do?”

All four of you almost jump out of your chairs when something clunks against the glass of the window near you.

There’s someone knocking on Redglare’s window. It’s four in the morning, so this can’t possibly be anything good.

You press a finger to your lips to hush everyone, and creep around to the side of the window. It’s impossible to miss the troll flying outside the window, because he’s managed to both hit the genetic jackpot with an almost unwieldy set of horns, and ruined any chance at all of himself not getting culled on sight by the empire by also having a huge set of wings.

You don’t think his horns would fit through the trap door, actually, and aren’t sure how he got past Redglare’s lusus.

He taps at the window again, and offers you a crooked smile when you open the window enough to talk to him. “You guys are actually pretty hard to track down, you know?”

“That’s the point, hun,” Mindfang chimes from behind you, where she still hasn’t picked up the pen again.

“Who are you?” you ask, claws at your sides. Just in case. It looks like his wings are laced with blood veins, so they aren’t a bad target if he’s a hostile—

“Oh! I’m Summoner. I brought friends. To… help rescue the Sufferer?”

He’s only been gone for two weeks, and they’re already giving him a depressing name. You refuse to acknowledge how fitting it probably is, and focus on getting him out instead. Compartmentalization.

There’s a good hundred or so assorted lowbloods, gathered around Redglare’s tree on the ground. Most of them still have their lusii, and you look back up at this Summoner. Past the horns and the wings, he’s just younger than you. A pale lusus hovers just behind him, tiny wings fluttering.

“You’d betfur come in,” you say, “And if this is a trap, I will purrsonally claw off your wings.”

He looks understandably nervous as he pulls his wings closer to his back and turns sideways in order to climb through the window, and Darkleer – sweet, awkward Darkleer – goes and gets him a stool so he doesn’t have to sit on his wings. “I—uh, thanks. I brought an army? And tents.”

Another peek out the window confirms, yes, the trolls milling around the forest are putting up tents in little overlapping half-circles. You really hope you haven’t drawn a lot of attention to yourselves, but honestly, you’re fighting the clock anyway so it doesn’t matter.

“You’re trying to come at them from eight directions at once?” he says, once everyone’s sitting down again.

“We didn’t have the numbers for it before, but we were talking about it. How well trained are they?” Redglare nods towards the window, twirling her cane sword.

“Not very, but most of them will listen to orders and their lusii know how to fight?”

“Why do you have so many lusii with you, anyway?” asks Mindfang. She’s surreptitiously fixing her hat, brushing crumpled paper from it onto the floor.

“I can talk to them,” he says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. Of course, your Kankri dreams about other people’s lives, so.

Redglare opens her husktop, tapping the refresh button on all the news sites she’s still got open. When she slams the lid shut again, you stop looking at Summoner and stare at her. She somewhat sheepishly opens the husktop again, and makes a tiny, desperate noise as she turns it to you.

The top news article – also in lurid fuchsia – proclaims that a “rebel mutant” is going to be publicly executed in five days.

“There’s our timetable,” you say, slipping back into the cold-and-detached hunter mode. “Let’s do this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has recently come to my attention that Star Trek: Discovery premieres on my birthday and I'm far too much of a nerd to pass up this opportunity. As usual, comments, concerns, questions, drop me a comment or whatever! See you on Friday!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the part where I branch out to other POVs, specifically Disciple's, here. Thanks to MightyWolf1029 and concernedWallflower for betaing!  
> \--Okay, I was going to post ch 10 and realized ch 9 only got saved as a draft? ??? so here's both anyway I guess

Your name is MEULIN LEIJON, mostly known as THE DISCIPLE, and you are ON THE WARPATH.

You and Darkleer – silly, sweet, misguided and raised in a culture where he was taught what you know to be irrevocably wrong – got out fast, him sweating and you going cold-and-calculating like you need to in situations like this, like you’re hunting and not trying to stop your family from falling apart.

You get a dozen blocks away at a full-out sprint, and stop under a bridge to catch your breath and to push Darkleer into a wall, whisper-shouting, “Explain!”

He does. It’s slow, and a little stuttery, and he keeps having to wipe his face, but eventually he tells you what happened. He’s been coming to “the mutant preacher Signless’s” meetings as often as he could get himself put in the roster for spying on them – yeah, spying, you got yourself a defecting spy – and he’s been talking to you, and he’s been thinking that maybe he’s been wrong his whole life and he’s scared but he found out about the raid and he couldn’t let them get (you) Signless’s group.

You unfreeze, just a tiny bit, and hug him. He looks startled, like he hadn’t expected you to thank him for doing what he could.

And then you make him help you circle back some.

You rip a strip of cloth from your shirt – sorry, Mom – and use it to tie your hair into a ponytail on the very top of your head, so it hides your horns. It also gets in your face almost constantly, but that’ll make it harder for people to tell it’s you.

You get there in time to hear Psii scream, to see him crumple to the ground and a headpiece forced onto his face. Signless screams from a nearby rooftop, and there’s no way you can get to him before they do, so you grab for Darkleer’s hand and run.

Outside the town, it’s quiet, like nothing’s happened and nobody’s being hurt or tortured or whatever Her Imperial Fish-face is going to do to them. Probably make an example out of them.

Your hand clenches around Darkleer’s. You can’t let them do that. You’d do anything to keep them safe, and you have a sinking suspicion you’re not going to see them for a while, but you  _ will _ see them again.

Signless and Psii would be hopeless without you, after all. Can’t leave your boys alone, or they’ll keep doing the thing where they don’t talk about their problems. Or, you know, die.

You take Darkleer to Redglare’s house, where she answers the trapdoor and pulls you in quickly, eyes red and puffy with teal tear-tracks down her cheeks. She hugs you, her glasses off for one of the first times ever, and you hug her back as Darkleer awkwardly shifts behind you.

“Darkleer, this is Initiate Redglare,” you start, but she cuts you off.

“Neophyte. I’m officially graduated, not that it matters right now. Have you seen Rosa? Is she ok?”

You shake your head, hair flying around you. “I haven’t seen them since they were clawt. How’d you find out?”

She wordlessly turns her husktop to you. It’s the top story on every news site, no pictures, of course, not yet, but “DANGEROUS REBEL MUTANT CAUGHT” emblazoned in angry fuchsia along the top of every site she opens.

You take it from her, exiting out of every news site window she has open. You open a blank text document, and turn it back to her. “We’re going to fix this, and we don’t have a lot of time.”

The next two weeks are a flurry of planning, highly illegal websites, and Redglare teaming up with her arch nemesis.

Mindfang is an honest-to-goodness pirate, fancy hat and all, and it’s hysterical how much she and Redglare blackflirt. Since you told them they weren’t allowed to physically attack each other during planning sessions because you need to actually get things done, they’re pelting each other with crumpled up pieces of paper. Redglare’s trying to get as many as she can to land on Mindfang’s hat, while Mindfang is mostly trying to get them to land behind Redglare’s glasses.

Darkleer had drawn out where Empire forces were stationed – that he knew of. He’d also pointed out where they were probably holding Psii and Kankri and Rosa, but there was no way you could get there with your tiny force of a dozen pirates and two dozen assorted trolls. Most of whom were spread out over a decent chunk of the continent, so it wasn’t like you could just call everyone together quickly.

Mindfang is saying something about how you should “come at them from all eight sides” and you aren’t even certain where she’s talking about at this point, because there isn’t a single place that  _ has _ eight access points. Her Imperial Fish-face is more careful than that.

“Mindfang, there  _ aren’t _ eight ways into the Empress’s palace.” Redglare scoffs a little, arms crossed over her dragon cane.

“Yes, yes, but what about the sewer system? Or from above? Or with the food deliveries?”

She’s got one of the markers Darkleer’d been using before, sketching out the five regular routes in, and then circling the three she’d just suggested.

“We don’t have the numbers for that,” Redglare said, peering at them under her glasses. “Even counting us, that’s five people per route.”

Mindfang made a face, tossing the marker down again. “Then what can we do?”

All four of you almost jump out of your chairs when something clunks against the glass of the window near you.

There’s someone knocking on Redglare’s window. It’s four in the morning, so this can’t possibly be anything good.

You press a finger to your lips to hush everyone, and creep around to the side of the window. It’s impossible to miss the troll flying outside the window, because he’s managed to both hit the genetic jackpot with an almost unwieldy set of horns, and ruined any chance at all of himself not getting culled on sight by the empire by also having a huge set of wings.

You don’t think his horns would fit through the trap door, actually, and aren’t sure how he got past Redglare’s lusus.

He taps at the window again, and offers you a crooked smile when you open the window enough to talk to him. “You guys are actually pretty hard to track down, you know?”

“That’s the point, hun,” Mindfang chimes from behind you, where she still hasn’t picked up the pen again.

“Who are you?” you ask, claws at your sides. Just in case. It looks like his wings are laced with blood veins, so they aren’t a bad target if he’s a hostile—

“Oh! I’m Summoner. I brought friends. To… help rescue the Sufferer?”

He’s only been gone for two weeks, and they’re already giving him a depressing name. You refuse to acknowledge how fitting it probably is, and focus on getting him out instead. Compartmentalization.

There’s a good hundred or so assorted lowbloods, gathered around Redglare’s tree on the ground. Most of them still have their lusii, and you look back up at this Summoner. Past the horns and the wings, he’s just younger than you. A pale lusus hovers just behind him, tiny wings fluttering.

“You’d betfur come in,” you say, “And if this is a trap, I will purrsonally claw off your wings.”

He looks understandably nervous as he pulls his wings closer to his back and turns sideways in order to climb through the window, and Darkleer – sweet, awkward Darkleer – goes and gets him a stool so he doesn’t have to sit on his wings. “I—uh, thanks. I brought an army? And tents.”

Another peek out the window confirms, yes, the trolls milling around the forest are putting up tents in little overlapping half-circles. You really hope you haven’t drawn a lot of attention to yourselves, but honestly, you’re fighting the clock anyway so it doesn’t matter.

“You’re trying to come at them from eight directions at once?” he says, once everyone’s sitting down again.

“We didn’t have the numbers for it before, but we were talking about it. How well trained are they?” Redglare nods towards the window, twirling her cane sword.

“Not very, but most of them will listen to orders and their lusii know how to fight?”

“Why do you have so many lusii with you, anyway?” asks Mindfang. She’s surreptitiously fixing her hat, brushing crumpled paper from it onto the floor.

“I can talk to them,” he says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. Of course, your Kankri dreams about other people’s lives, so.

Redglare opens her husktop, tapping the refresh button on all the news sites she’s still got open. When she slams the lid shut again, you stop looking at Summoner and stare at her. She somewhat sheepishly opens the husktop again, and makes a tiny, desperate noise as she turns it to you.

The top news article – also in lurid fuchsia – proclaims that a “rebel mutant” is going to be publicly executed in five days.

“There’s our timetable,” you say, slipping back into the cold-and-detached hunter mode. “Let’s do this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has recently come to my attention that Star Trek: Discovery premieres on my birthday and I'm far too much of a nerd to pass up that opportunity. As usual, comments, concerns, questions, drop me a comment or whatever! See you on Friday!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, thanks to concernedWallflower24 and MightyWolf1029 for betaing! Something went wrong with posting Monday's chapter and it got saved as a draft instead of actually getting posted, so here's both pt 2. Whoops.

Your name is PSIIONIIC, and EVERYTHING HURTS. You haven’t seen Rosa since you were captured, and you and Kankri were in the same room for somewhere around two minutes at one point, but other than that, you haven’t seen them or Meulin in over two weeks.

It’s surprising how much time you have to think about them when you’re captured by the enemy.

You can’t reach your psionics. It’s like there’s a glass wall between you and them. You know they’re still there, you can reach out and they’ll reach for you, too, but you can’t quite get to them, because you’re pushed against opposite sides of a barrier.

They’ve been talking about hooking you back up to a ship, and you can’t do that. You wouldn’t be able to take that. But you don’t have a way out yet, and you can’t leave without Kankri or Rosa anyway. Goggles, slightly crooked on your face, too tight.

There’s a clang as the door to the cell they’ve been keeping you in opens. Peering up through your bangs, trapped down against your face by the headpiece blocking your powers, you see a purple-blood, a seadweller with a scarred face, looming over you. “Get up,” he says. You’re glaring at him, but you do.

You’re powerless, and you hate it.

You’re put in manacles, pulled down a hallway, and lead through the building in silence. Until the seadweller moving you apparently gets fed up with this. “I don’t get wwhy wwe’re doing this,” he mutters, stretching his w’s far too long. It’s actually kind of annoying.

“’cauthe you’re part of a dictatorthip built on thorting people by arbitrary distinctionth,” you say. Fuck this. Fuck this so much. “And you want to make an example of uth ‘cauthe you think it’ll make your pothition thtronger.” Kan’s always been better at verbalizing things than you are, but he’s not here right now, so you’ll have to make do.

He glares at you. Obviously he wasn’t expecting a response. He doesn’t say another word for the entire rest of the walk, though, so there’s that. Give him some food for thought. You kick the corner of the door you’re being lead through on your way past, and then you’re outside in the darkness of night.

It’s not completely dark, though. There’s torches lit in a circle, a huge crowd past the edge of the light, half-hidden in shadow. Rosa’s already there, hands bound, too. You make eye contact with her. There’s tears in her eyes, and her skin is dimmer than you’ve seen it in the entire time you’ve known her.

And then you see it.

It’s tall, twisted metal hanging from a pillar, like something from a nightmare. There’s wood at the base, and a pair of curled manacles dangle from the pillar over the wood, open and waiting.

“Are you alright?” Rosa asks, when the seadweller pushes you close enough to her.

“Doin’ just fine,” the seadweller says.

“Shut up, Dualscar,” Rosa says, and she’s a tiny bit brighter now.

“Not really,” you say. You bump your shoulder into hers, “I can’t reach my pthionicth, DR. It’th the headband thing. Have you seen Thignlethh?”

“No,” she says. She’s leaning on you, and you shut your eyes for a second. You want to be anywhere but here, as long as they’re with you. As long as they’re okay.

When you open them again, a huge subjugglator is striding over to the shackles in the center of the circle. He turns, slightly, and you can see Kankri tucked under one of his arms like he’s luggage, and you reach for your psionics hard enough you can taste electricity on your tongue. They’re still trapped, though, and Rosa wouldn’t be able to get the headpiece off your head without drawing some serious attention, and you don’t think you can take a crowd, especially with Chucklevoodoos in play.

The highblood hangs Kan from the shackles, then bows low enough that his horns practically touch the ground. The seadweller – Dualscar – does the same. The shadowed trolls in the crowd kneel.

You and Dolorosa stand tall, or as tall as you can when you’ve barely eaten and Rosa’s bruised. Kankri’s covered in cuts, but none of them look very deep. His blood is bright red against tattered gray clothes, the red accents on his leggings barely discernable.

He manages a smile in your direction – too far away to say anything to you and Dolorosa, but still trying to comfort you. “Oh,” Dolorosa says, more of a soft exhalation than anything. “Oh, Kankri.” She sounds tired, more tired than you’ve ever heard her.

“’lin’th thafe,” you say, more trying to convince yourself than anything else. “They didn’t get her. She’th okay.”

The Empress is here, herself, bright fuchsia and pitch black and glittering gold. Her grin is sharp, shining in the darkness. Firelight glints against the eyes of the trolls in the crowd, and your gaze goes from worried to angry as you turn towards Her Imperious Condescension.

The barest hint of static blossoms within your clenched fists. Not enough to do anything with, and you can already feel a headache coming on, but you  _ can _ break the barrier between you and your power. It’ll just hurt like hell, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that you might have a chance to get Rosa and Kankri out, away from here.

Condense doesn’t say a word, just smirks and gestures for everyone to rise. The purpleblood towers over her, and when he glances in your direction, you make the connection too fast. The Grand Highblood. He’s here, She’s here, and Dualscar is getting to his feet too, dusting off his cape. “Rise,” the Grand Highblood says, voice echoing over you.

This is bad.

There’s a short woman in the crowd, with long, curled ram’s horns and flickering eyes and a bright green dress. She’s looking right at you, and she smiles, like everything will be alright, and vanishes in a flash of yellow-and-purple with a finger pressed to her lips in a universal gesture of shush.

You lean into Rosa more, and try to think.

“You are here today because this,” the Grand Highblood gestures at Kankri, like he’s a thing, and you want to burn him with your eyes but there’s glass in the way and you can only reach a spark of your powers. “This mutant had the gall to go against Her Imperious Condescension.”

The gall to speak against her. The gall to spread hope for something that wasn’t this violent hellscape. The gall to try and carve out a life for himself.

“His punishment will be death, and his compatriots  _ will _ do their duties for the Empire.” So they’ll send you off to be a ship’s battery, again, and they can’t send Rosa back to the Mothergrubs, so she’ll probably be given to some crony. The barrier between you and your power cracks, just a bit more, and the power is heavy on your tongue now, but you keep it clenched in your fists, refusing to let it play in your hair and between your horns like it usually does. “We will hunt down and find anyone who sympathizes with these traitors, and they will face a similar fate.”

He kind of sounds like he’s reading directly off a script, but it doesn’t matter. Condense, and by extension, the Grand Highblood, have all the power here. The crowd is shifting, moving uncertainly. They just threatened countless numbers of people –  _ anyone _ who gave you shelter, fed you, your always-growing network of wrigglers just trying to get somewhere safe? The death toll will be in the thousands.

And he picks up the torch by where Kankri is chained, and lights something within it on fire, shoveling handfuls of the wood from the base of the pillar into it, too.

The crowd roars – disapproval, approval, it doesn’t matter – and Kankri screams, as the metal around his wrists heats up.

You scream too, and the barrier cracks a bit more, enough that you can feel psionics in your hair and blood in your eyes.

“FUCK!” Kankri shouts, and you want to run to him, but there’s a rifle crossed in front of you. “FUCKING –“ he bites off his words, gasping for a breath. “Sorry,” he says, and you can see his hands clench. “That was uncalled for.”

And that startles a hysterical laugh out of you, because of  _ course _ it was. If there was a time for cursing, it would be now. The crowd dies down a bit, at both his shouting and your laugh.

“I have never hidden what I am,” he calls, voice pitched to carry, even though you can hear the pain, too, “Except to protect those I cared for. And when even that didn’t work, I tried. I know your faces.” His eyes are wide, as he tries to see farther into the crowd. “I know some of your names, I know your stories. We aren’t different, but for the color of the blood that flows in our veins, or outside of them.” His leggings are stained red, and he laughs, a terrible sound. You can feel the barrier fracturing a bit more. Almost there.

You don’t know what you can do even if you manage to break through to your powers, but anything is better than watching helpless.

“I just can’t figure out why, when I tried SO HARD,” he’s getting louder. “AND JUST WHEN I WAS STARTING TO THINK I WAS GETTING SOMEWHERE,” his voice cracks, a little, and the rest of the barrier between you and your powers crumbles. You can’t charge in though, no matter how much you want to. The Highblood is still there, and he could crush you with a thought.

Have you mentioned you hate Chucklevoodoos?

“YOU PULL THIS SHIT.” Kankri’s still going. His hands are twitching, and you hate this. You hate every second of this. “I AM ANGRY, BECAUSE I STILL FORGIVE YOU. I AM A FOOL—“

“Good thing we brought the cavalry then, huh?” calls Redglare from above, and a somewhat distressingly large amount of sopor pours down onto the Grand Highblood, splashing down and managing to stifle the fire in the column. “Hi Dollface!” she calls down to Rosa, who’s still leaning on you. “Surprise!”

Guards flood through the crowd, paying little attention to the people they trample on their way to the middle. Some of them don’t even make it, because grasping hands from within the crowd pull them to the side.

The Highblood hasn’t moved, and you figure this is as good a chance as any. Your psionics flare, ripping the headpiece off your face, splitting it down the center and throwing both halves in different directions. You snap the links on Rosa’s cuffs, then your own, and jar the rifle from Dualscar’s hands, sending it soaring into the crowd. There’s blood running down your neck and into your mouth and pooling in your goggles, but you don’t care.

You scream, your psionics flickering around you, and you fly straight for Kankri.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annnd on that note, I'll be back next Monday with another chapter! We're getting pretty close to the end now, just three more and it's over.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyway now I'm very confused because chapter 9 probably went up on time but somehow got turned into a draft while I was trying to post 10??? Whatever I guess.  
> Thanks to concernedWallflower24 and MightyWolf1029 for betaing! Only one more real chapter and an epiloguey chapter left!

Your name is HANDMAID, and you're FED UP with THIS SHIT. You don't want to deal with this tragedy, and while you could go for something more drastic, careful manipulation seems like the safer bet.

Literally killing the future Empress of an empire, who will live for hundreds upon thousands of years, seems like it would have repercussions too far down the timeline for you to be willing to risk.

You've thought about it, though.

Would probably pretty satisfying.

You settle for changing small things. You snatch up the tiny bronze blood, with the horns that branch out along the sides of his head. Those will be a pain to deal with later, you think, somewhat detached.

He pulls one of the sticks keeping your hair in place out when you hold him in front of you, and you scowl at him. You don't think you're particularly fond of hatchlings, especially ones who seem bent on chewing on your backup wands. It takes far more effort than it should to tug it out of his grasp - he's a grub, incapable of surviving on his own, why should you have this much trouble getting your stuff back from him?

A quick jaunt to the past-present from the present-future, and he's in a position where his lifespan will fit better with the others of your theoretical cohort. This way, his rebellion won't come years too late.

Redglare is an easy fix, too. A nudge, a push in the right direction, and she meets the Dolorosa when they're more Latula and Porrim, young and rebelling in little ways, than Redglare and Dolorosa, older and tireder and rebelling in huge ways. They'll have more of a support system, Redglare won't see the Sufferer as someone distant. She'll see him as the child of her matesprite, and even though children and parents are a foreign concept to trolls as society is now, it will still serve to bind them closer.

It's harder to figure out how to shift Darkleer's story, how to manipulate him into meeting Disciple earlier, to affect a change of heart at a less desperate time. You steal into the clerical section of the palace, though, and shift his name a few lines higher on the list of people who could be sent to spy on the Sufferer and his family.

You displace the rustblood who would have given them up months earlier in the process, buying the Sufferer a bit more time to build his rebellion.

Mindfang is hard to manipulate, because she is stubborn. She sets herself a course, and even when turning would face her with smoother sailing, she charges directly ahead into the storm anyway. You settle for pushing her into Redglare earlier, which softens their antagonism, too. If Redglare knows Mindfang before she moves onto the truly heinous crimes, the mind control and the marauding and the slaving, she will be more likely to join forces with her. Mindfang may not even make it to some of those crimes, with Redglare’s mitigating influence.

It comes at a price, though. Mindfang will be less powerful, when the time comes, because she won't have honed herself into a rapier yet, won't have had a burgeoning kismesitude with Dualscar, because she'll have been too focused on the legislacerator to adventure very far on the seas and find him out there, doing his duty to the Empress.

Dualscar isn't someone you particularly enjoy shifting the story of, but you'll do it anyway. He has the potential to bring great good, but usually fucks it up or doesn't even start off going in the right direction. You weaken his bonds to the empress, push his letters to her a little farther back in the queue, drop her returning messages in the ocean so he thinks she hasn't responded. It will help, a little.

The Grand Highblood doesn't scare you. Rationally, he should, because he's a solid wall of usually angry Chucklevoodoos and muscle, but you aren't worried. Chucklevoodoos only really work when their owner is concentrating, and the best ways to break someone's concentration are with pain or pleasure.

Or dumping a vat full of sopor on them. It's a sedative, it'll work faster than stabbing him will. Especially since he is, in fact, a wall of muscle. Stabbing probably wouldn't help much.

The Disciple, you don't need to push much. She's already right where she needs to be. You shift your attention to other problems. Like the Empress herself.

She's too wary for you to do much to her directly, but you can do little things. Prompt her second-in-command into rebelling early, early enough that she's not expecting it yet and he gets away. Move her advisors away from giving her advanced fighting training, when she's young. She'll still be trained, of course, how couldn't she be? But it won't be as early, as ingrained, and that might give you an edge.

You arm the Dolorosa as best you can. Sharp blades, sharp teeth, and a sharp fashion sense she already has, but you offer her advice, in the form of pushing her closer to the woman who runs the birthing caves she comes from, show her a mother figure before she becomes one herself. Pushing her and Redglare together as children is a boon here, because she wants help with understanding when someone likes you.

It's sickeningly adorable, and you decide she'll be just fine. She almost always is, in your experience.

The Psiioniic, you don't know how much you can do for. You want to, you do, but he's wary, hurt, too easily cornered. Sending a young psionic to him was a stroke of genius, if you do say so yourself. Even if she and her cohort's fates are in a different direction, it will help both of them. You want to help him more, but every way you think of would reveal you too soon.

You settle for a smile, close to the end, and a brief moment of comfort, close to the beginning.

You contemplate interfering more directly in the Sufferer's early life, but he has to get to the manacles, if this rebellion is to work. A near-martyrdom will serve better, in this case, because his words are more powerful out of his mouth than they are passed at a whisper between others. The last push this rebellion needs to fully burn, is you. In person, less hidden than you've ever been.

For the first time you can remember, you are terrified. There is only so much you can change before the whole timeline crumbles into a doomed one, and even this much change shouldn't technically be possible, but you were careful. You kept yourself from changing too much at once, waited to see if you would die a terrible death this time, too.

When you didn't, you assumed it was safe enough, and moved onto the next change.

This finale, this event that you yourself will be present for the culmination of, is the result of so much work, and even if it means you must directly interfere, you will see it through.

You smile at the Psiioniic, and shush him. You want to offer him hope, not reveal your presence before everyone else arrives. You vanish to the roof of the palace in a small flash of yellow, and wait for the fireworks to start.

They appear on the horizon, first, a hundred or more trolls with their lusus in tow, ready to fight. It's beautiful, and you wonder how many of them will survive.

How many of the important ones will.

When Redglare upends a recuprecoon on the Grand Highblood, you surprise yourself by laughing. Oh, it's perfect. He looks so stunned, and confused, and out of sorts. He won't be able to pull himself together enough the use Chucklevoodoos while he's coated in sopor.

Red and blue psionics spill from the Psiionic's form, small and distant. You smile more. This seems to be going pretty well so far, anyway. More guards pour out of the surrounding entrances as the rebellion's forces truly arrive, troll fighting side by side.

Too soon.

The Empress herself is swinging her trident now, and that's your cue.

You fly yourself over them and drop yourself just outside her range, throwing up a grasping cage of yellow and purple power. "Move!" you shout. "Move, get out! I cannot hold her for long and you cannot face her yet!"

They go, as fast as they came. Soon, the clearing is empty except for the Empress and you.

"I have watched you grow into what you are now," you say, the barrier starting to crumble against the onslaught of her trident. "I have watched you go from innocent grub to an empress whose entire being is stained in the blood of the deaths she has caused."

"Got anything betta than that, guppy?" she says to you, not even breathing hard.

"This is not where our final battle is fated to happen," you say, more serene than you feel. "I'm not certain our final battle even needs to happen anymore. Now is not the time, though." You spin your needles in your hands, and recaptchalogue them. You don't need them today. "Think on the fact that this single mutant blood can raise an army this determined without even being present. Think on the fact that very few of your henchmen are dead. They do not want war, Meenah." Her name makes her stop and stare at you.

"Your words mean nothing, Demoness," she says to you, slowly. "You mean nothing to me."

"And that's your decision." You're as agreeable as you can be. "I'll take my leave now. Think on it."

You drop the last of the barrier from around her, but before she can swing out at you, you take to the sky in the opposite direction the Sufferer was taken.

You'll see them again soon enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the end of that brief digression to fill a couple of those giant plotholes. Pay no attention to the ones I have left open as it just kind of happened and I've chosen acceptance. I'll be back with chapter 12 on Friday!


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello yes I'm the idiot who spent most of today packing and cutting out tiny scalemate patterns, sorry about this teeeechnically not being Friday anymore. It's still Friday in like. California. Shh.  
> As always, thanks goes to concernedWallflower24 and MightyWolf1029 for betaing!

Your name is PSIIONIIC, and you’re very tired. You crashed, hard, when Redglare got you and Kan to what she told you was Mindfang’s old hive – a tall cliff, with a cave system inside. You fought sleep long enough for Meulin to get there, and she hugged the two of you – Kan still out like a light – before bustling you to a room deep within the caves, with a pile of cloth smack in the middle of the floor. “Go to sleep,” she said, and went up on her toes to smush a kiss to your forehead. “I’ve got him. I’ll wake you up in a bit, you’re a mess too, but appawrently Red and I are the only people with furst aid skills who aren’t also injured.”

“Yeah,” you said. She’d take care of Kankri.

You’d been woken up three hours later by Meulin, armed with bandages and a pair of scissors to get your clothes off you – the same stuff you’d put on weeks ago, before you’d been caught – and a wide bowl of water. “Kan’s still asleep,” she’d said, and helped you get cleaned up.

The next day was mostly spent trying to sleep off a headache, but you were up for the attempts at strategizing that usually just dissolved into Redglare and Mindfang and Rosa and Summoner arguing logistics and ethics for hours on end.

And when Kankri finally woke up, and Handmaid swooped in with a plan and flashy powers – the woman’s barely five feet tall and she’s absolutely terrifying and you can appreciate that – and now you’re sneaking in the back door of the fucking  _ Imperial Palace. _

You just got out of here. Or, the basement of here, anyway.

And now you’re back, with a smaller army than the one that got you out, because you’d collectively decided that the ten of you could probably handle whatever was back here.

Nine of you, because you’re sure as hell not letting Kankri fight with his wrists like that. Burnt badly, wrapped in bandages. You tried to ask him not to get involved in the fighting, but he’d gotten that serious look and told you he was  _ needed. _

You couldn’t really argue with that.

So now all ten of you are tromping in the back door of the Imperial Palace “sneakily.” You don’t think a group of ten trolls of varying heights, glowyness, and some of whom (Summoner) have frankly ridiculous horns and giant  _ wings _ , can sneak very well.

You’re pretty sure Mindfang’s just mentally controlling everyone you come across so they ignore you.

Dualscar is walking in the front, acting like he knows exactly where he’s going. He probably does, but you still kind of want to punch him in the face. Watching Rosa do it was pretty satisfying, but it’s not the same. Maybe later, though.

The rest of you are clumped around Kankri, who you’ve collectively decided needs to be in the very middle of your group. Handmaid is hanging back though, floating a few steps behind the main clump of your group. “This wway,” Dualscar says. You all shuffle after him. He’s slurring his w’s and v’s more than he was earlier, somehow more nervous now than when his death was on the table. Fucking highbloods.

The hall has incredibly ornate, gold-encrusted pillars that really aren't necessary, you don't think. But whatever. Dualscar leads you down a hallway, just as surprised as you are that no one's tried to stop you. Thanks, weird pirate lady. You follow him around the weirdly labyrinthine halls of the palace for at least an hour before he comes to a stop. "The Grand Highblood might be here," he says, moving like he's going to shuffle back into the middle of your group. Rosa, who's near the front, blocks him.

"Then maybe you should go see if you can talk him into leaving," she says, calm and pleasant.

Dualscar grumbles a bit, but heads into the room, shutting the gilded door behind him.

There's quiet talking, muffled by the door, and then you hear a louder, "That's the best joke you've fuckin' got?!"

True to her usual form, Rosa takes that as her cue to kick the door open, and the nine of you still outside rush to fill the room. It's wider than the hallways you'd been walking down, and taller, too, but it's not lined in gold. The walls and the ceiling are every color you could think of - or that exists inside trolls, really. Fucking juggalos. You even spot some fuschia, among the various other colors.

"Okay, now THIS is a joke," the Grand Highblood laughs. His face paint makes it look kind of like his mouth was sewn shut - the sheer volume he can speak at kind of makes you wish it was. "You're rebelling, Ampora?"

"Don't glubbin' call me that," Dualscar says, looking smaller than he should. The guy's seven feet tall, but the Highblood almost reaches eight if you include his horns. Honestly, coldbloods get way too tall. It just makes it easier for them to look down on people.

There's a flicker of movement in the doorway behind him. The Empress, missing half her jewelry, and with her hair up in a long braid. "What's goin' on out here?" she says, somehow sounding sleepy.

Sometimes, you forgot that the Empress is a troll, too. A fishy, evil troll, but a troll.

The Handmaid zips from behind you, ducking the wild swing the Grand Highblood makes in her direction, and tackles the Condense.

And the pair of them wink out of existence.

You knew that was going to happen, but that doesn't make it any more startling. She'd told you she was going to haul the Empress off into another section of the timeline, have a long talk, but--

No time to stare at the space where they used to be, because now the Highblood is mad. Probably because you busted in and staged what he probably sees as an assassination attempt, which is fair, but there's a sudden heavy weight of Chucklevoodoos pressing down on you.

Have you mentioned that you hate Chucklevoodoos?

Mindfang can't control highbloods very well, but she can get enough of a mental grip on him that the 'voodoos retreat enough for you to fly past, into the Empress's bedchamber, grab her entire recupricoon - also gold encrusted, with hot pink highlights, because of course it was – rip it out of the floor, and fly back with it to upend it on his head.

The sopor blocks them out, which is good, but now he's even madder, which is less good, especially considering how close you had to get to him to get the 'coon over his head. You aren't up to full power, nowhere near it, really, because it's only been three days since you busted through a psionic dampening headpiece and blew some shit up. You're lucky you don't have a pounding headache right now, although you're sure it's coming.

He swings an arm at you, and you're too slow to get out of the way. You fly backwards, crashing into a wall and sliding down onto your back. You get up as fast as you possibly can, in time to see Redglare and Rosa charge him together, Rosa with a chainsaw and Redglare with her canesword. Mindfang's behind them, with a set of dice she's rolling around in her hand.

The Highblood roars, swings his other arm, and connects with Rosa, hurling her back into Redglare. They land in a heap of limbs, but before they've even hit the ground, Mindfang throws the dice into the air with a flourish.

A pair of pistols appear in her hand, and she makes a face at how weirdly colorful they are before aiming them at the Highblood and shooting.

Two shots go wide, chipping pieces of gilding off the walls, but the other two hit, one in the leg and the other in the shoulder. He barely seems to notice though, still roaring.

"How has no one noticed uth?!" you whisper shout in her direction.

"I'm still in their heads," she says, teeth gritted. Multitasking, in a battle like this, is never a good sign.

Summoner and Meulin are charging now, Meulin with her claws and Summoner with a jousting lance. She darts ahead of him, raking her claws along his other leg, the one that didn't get shot. An arrow appears next to her claw marks, from Darkleer, who's standing farther away and has this honestly super-cool looking metal bow contraption set up. Summoner's lance ends up bouncing off his weird over-underwear thing though, and Summoner almost falls over, wings flapping slightly to keep him upright. He goes flying into the wall near you, but you manage to catch him before he actually hits it.

"Thanks," he says, readjusting his grip on his lance.

Kankri's still standing by the entrance, sickle gripped in his hands. His wrists are still wrapped in bandages, as are various other parts of him, but you always seem to fixate on his wrists.

Probably because you saw them burn, you saw the Highblood string him up, and you find your anger, again.

The Highblood is staring at Kankri in the doorway, like he’s the easy target, and you can’t let him get to Kanrki. Twin beams of red and blue shoot out at him, and you scream.

When you shut your eyes, any hope of avoiding a headache until after this is done is completely gone, and the Highblood is laying on the ground, bleeding and unconscious.

There's silence, uncomfortable, as you slump down to the ground. Ow.

"Is he dead?" Dualscar asks. He'd darted into the Condense's room after the fighting broke out, the coward.

"No." Rosa checks his pulse, kneeling down briefly where he's sprawled on the ground.

"Shouldn't he be? Wwasn't that the wwhole point of this?"

"No." Redglare speaks this time, "The end goal was Handmaid yanking Her Imperious Fishface into wherever they went. Something time-travely."

"Now what, then?" Summoner wants to know. "We just... wait? For her to get back?"

"Yup." Meulin shakes herself a little, sheaths her claws. Kankri's still standing in the doorway, and she pulls him into the room, prods him into putting his sickle away. He hadn't used it, he'd been frozen the whole time.

But he'd been safe.

He follows her to where you're sitting against the wall. "You alright, Psii?" she asks, standing over you.

"Thouldn't have done the eyebeamth," you say, thumping your head back against the wall. "Thought I could hold off the migraine until after, but nope."

She sits down next to you, pulling Kankri down in the process. "Right. Plop your head down over here, shut your eyes. We'll keep watch."

Everyone else seems to shuffle off into smaller groups, too, Redglare and Rosa standing fairly close to you and holding hands, Summoner and Mindfang speaking in low voices across the room, standing way too close together for them to not be in a quadrant. Darkleer and Dualscar awkwardly hover in opposite corners. 

You don't go to sleep - you're sitting in the middle of the imperial palace, with an unconscious high-ranking member of the empire across the room from you and wrapped in layers and layers of rope, that would be a terrible plan - but keeping your eyes shut helps, some, and Meulin's cool hands on your forehead help a bit too. Kankri's is leaning on Meulin's shoulder, opposite you, absently playing with your hair.

You kind of wish you weren't anywhere near the Empress's palace, but now the nine of you have to wait for the Handmaid to come back.

It's another half hour or so before Handmaid returns, calm despite the fact that she's clearly holding hands with the Empress. "See?" she says. "Only around half an hour, from their perspective."

"You're a piece of work, ya know that?" the Condense says, somehow managing to sound fond. "Right, then, we're out. You betta visit, alright?"

"Of course. I said I would, and I don't break promises."

"Sea ya around, guppies," she says, to your group as a whole, who are mostly just staring at her in shock. She leans down and picks up the Highblood with ease, muttering, "Mako-ra, we're gonna have to have a long talk. On the glubbin’ moon," before sauntering out the door like she's not carrying over seven feet of Juggalo-rope cocoon slung over her shoulder.

"What just happened?" Kankri asks. You want to know too, but your head still hurts.

"I took her to another time period, and we fought. And we talked. And we fought some more. Eventually, we became something like friends." Handmaid looks tired, a little more worn than she was when she left. "It took a couple sweeps, but I talked her around."

"You were gone for half an hour," Redglare pointed out.

"Yes. I took us to the far future, and the far past, and several points in between. And then I returned us here, to this time, in this place, and she picked up Kurloz and is abdicating and moving to the moon." She's smiling, teeth sharp. "I told her I would come visit."

"So... that's it?" Summoner asks. "We won? She's abdicating, just like that?"

"I wouldn't say 'just like that,'" Redglare says. "She spent an absurd amount of time talking to her. Apparently. Is time travel some sort of secret rustblood power, then? Because I don't think normal trolls can... time travel."

"It's something I learned from my former boss," she says. "I do not think I will have to do much more of it, in the future. Because we have a future, now." She smiles again, and lifts off the ground slightly. "I recommend you decide how this empire will be ruled, soon. I suppose you could come to me for advice, but I don't want to be in the forefront of the new regime. I've never really liked being in the spotlight."

You shut your eyes again. "I don't care," you say. "Do whatever. I guethh. Don't fuck up? I'm going to take a nap."

Your head still hurts. You roll, tucking your face against Meulin's stomach. Nope. Ignoring the bickering that's breaking out behind you, you go to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Monday's chapter might be a little late because I'll be out in the middle of nowhere with spotty internet connection, but it'll be the epilogue so there's that. I've had a blast posting it on here, thank you guys so much for the support!


	13. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have returned to the land of functional AC and consistent internet! Here's the last chapter, and, as always, thanks to concernedWallflower24 and MightyWolf1029 for betaing! It's been fun, guys, seriously, thank you for all the support :)

Weeks pass. Setting up a government is harder than you'd thought it would be, and you aren't even directly involved very much, except when it's actually an issue you're particularly involved in. Like what to do about the Psionic Training Camps. And ways to power ships that don't involve enslaving psionics.

You're safer now, though, which is a plus. Kankri finally heals enough that he can take off the bandages, solid bands of sort of angry-looking scar tissue around his wrists.

He smiles at you when you hold his hand.

That's another thing that's better. You'd managed to sit down, and talk with, both him and Meulin at the same time. Since things are calmer now - not peaceful, never peaceful - and you're less skittish, you don't wake up in the middle of the afternoon thinking you're on a ship as much anymore, especially with Kankri and Meulin sleeping nearby, you feel like you can talk to them about the whole dancing-around-quadrants, without having to take breaks to go hide in the cloud layer.

You still end up turning yellow when you try to do anything more than holding their hands, though, so that's still a thing that's happening.

Not everyone is happy with the change in governance, of course. More highbloods are mad than lowbloods, but there are lowbloods who get pretty pissed when they finally get it through their heads that you aren't flipping the hemospectrum, you're trying to get rid of it entirely.

There's not a shortage of things to do, really.

Summoner has been going around, trying to talk people down and make sure everyone knows what's going on. Mindfang alternates between trailing after him and bothering Redglare, who's hip deep in legal papers and half-rewritten laws.

Dualscar isn't being very useful, but he's also not actively opposing you, and having him at least look like he's on your side is a point in your favor with the highbloods, since you did kind of chase the Empress into exile.

For a value of exile that was completely voluntary and, from what you've heard from Handmaid's occasional visits, more of an extended vacation than anything else. She's even got internet up there, somehow, and has taken to trolling you at random intervals to ask about what you've been doing to "her former subjects."

Which is sort of awkward for everyone involved, and you've been ignoring her.

You haven't been ignoring Handmaid, though. She's nice, when she's not up to weird time shenanigans, and while she's busy helping set up a new government - despite her protests - she's been messaging you in the middle of meetings to make fun of the others.

"Psii," Meulin says. You look down at her. She's got her hair up again - she's been helping Darkleer take some of the ridiculous gold gilt off the walls, because, really, that's just useless and a bit tacky. "You good?"

"Yeah," you say, and she rises up onto her tiptoes and taps her cheek. You laugh, and obediently lean down to press a kiss to her face. "Thee you later," you say. She sticks her tongue out at you before hauling you farther down so she can get to your face, too, sprinkling your forehead, cheeks, and nose with kisses as you laugh. "Meulin, Darkleer'th waiting," you say, somehow sounding way less urgent than you'd planned on.

"He's fine," she says, but lets go of your face anyway with a parting peck on the lips. "Go find Kan," she says. "Don't loiter around in our room all day."

"I wath fixing the login thythtem," you say. You really had been. It'd taken longer than it should have because for some reason half of it was routed through what was essentially a color-locked set of logins - it didn't so much check who was trying to get into a website as it checked what the blood color of the troll trying to get into the website was. Which was dumb. You'd had to figure out what government websites actually needed to be locked to the general public because of sensitive information like hatching cavern statistics, or the identities of wrigglers with psionic abilities, and which ones were just arbitrarily locked for no reason. You're still not sure why a list of good beaches was locked to anyone who wasn't a purpleblood or the former Empress, but you fixed that, too.

"M-hm," she says, patting your arm as she heads for the door. "Go rescue Kan from empire planning." And then she's gone, footsteps getting farther and farther away. You listen to her until you can't hear her anymore, pack up your husktop, and set off in the opposite direction.

Kankri isn't hard to find, mostly because he's shouting. "-NOT TAKING A CROWN. NO. WE DID NOT GO THROUGH THIS WHOLE MESS JUST TO CROWN SOMEONE ELSE. THAT IS NOT WHAT HAPPENED."

You slip into the room. Somewhat predictably, it's Dolorosa, Redglare, Mindfang, Summoner, and Dualscar, sitting around a table with Kankri at the head of it. You sit down next to him, nudging him with your foot. He takes a deep breath, and glares daggers directly at Dualscar.

"No. Just... no. Don't try and bring that up again. Don't do it. It's dumb and we've got better things to do than shoot down your dumb ideas." You set up your husktop, the quiet buzz of its startup familiar.

"I just thought--" Dualscar says, only to get elbowed in the side by Mindfang. He curls inward, wincing. She probably hit him in the gills.

"Okay, then how is the Empire getting governed?" Mindfang asks. "Got any brilliant ideas?"

"Council?" Summoner suggests. "I mean, it's not too far off from what we're doing right now, but we could do it either regionally or by blood color."

"The Empress has a council, technically," Redglare says. "They've got no power, of course, and it's a weird combination of by-caste and by-region, but the system is there. They  _ are  _ elected."

"So we could build on that. I don’t want to just have us taking over completely," Kankri says.

You tune them out after that, focusing on hacking various guidance systems on as many ships as you can find, to pull them into the nearby station. You've got ideas, stuff that you've been working with Darkleer on.

A system for psionics to interface with a ship without being hooked into it, no biowires in sight, less of an engine and more of a navigator. You've been plugging stuff into simulators, working out the numbers to see if it's feasible.

But you need to get as many ships as you can into your area, retrofit them where possible, and free the psionics trapped in engine blocks.

You've had far less resistance than you were expecting, really, especially when you told them that since their psionics would be able to actually take breaks, they wouldn't have as much of an issue with burnout.

So yeah, your projects are going pretty well, even though Kankri's mostly just arguing logistics of fixing an empire built on a system you're trying to dismantle.

They end up talking in circles for hours on end while you manage to pull four more ships into the station. You’ve got people now, mostly fellow psionics and some of their quadrants, and they’ll swoop in with official documentation and get the psionics out of the engine blocks.

You’ll go visit tomorrow. Kankri might come with you, he could use a break from the circular arguments that come from trying to figure out how to govern with a seadweller noble, a barely-graduated legislacerator, a former mothergrub caretaker, a former pirate, and an ex-cavalreaper. But for now, you should do something about the tension in his shoulders and the way his voice is steadily getting louder.

You shut your husktop and pack it up again, tapping on Kankri’s shoulder. “Break time,” you tell him. He tries to protest – they haven’t fixed all the problems in the galaxy, they can’t take a break yet – but you share a smirk with Redglare and scoop him up with your psionics, floating him ahead of you as you leave the room. “Bye,” you say. “Don’t thet the palathe on fire.”

“I’d never,” Redglare says, fake-offended. You’re all ignoring Kankri’s halfhearted protests. You grin at her and wave before heading down the hallway back to your room to drop off your husktop.

“What are we doing?” Kankri asks. You just smile at him and open the window.

It’s dark out, the stars a little fainter this close to the city, and you send him out the window first, following him and offering him a hand. “Feel like flying?” you ask.

“Why not,” he says, sighing like he doesn’t love it too. He takes your hand, and you fly the two of you higher into the sky.

You fly through the sparse clouds, fast enough that you manage to stay mostly dry. It’s just cold enough that you pull him closer. “Hi,” you say, and he smiles at you. Even though you’re both safer now, that doesn’t mean you’re immediately completely fine.

He’s got scars now too. You’ve got more than you had before. Both of you still have bags under your eyes. You’re both tired, you both wake up with daymares, and you’ve both got a lot on your plates. Him more than you, probably, but your work is important. And you’d help with his too, but you have no experience with ruling an empire. Granted, neither do they, but you’d probably just make it worse.

You bring one of his hands to your face and kiss the inside of his wrist, at the edge of the scar. “Hey,” he says back, finally, cheeks a faint red. “We’re flying now?”

“Yep,” you say. He laces your fingers together. “We aren’t running a country right now. No arguing about electionth,” he smiles, a bit rueful, at that, “No rewriting hundred-yearth-old law bookth ‘cauthe they’re shitty. Jutht flying.”

“There’s so much to be done,” he says, looking at your linked hands. “How can I justify taking a break?”

“We’ve already done tho much. Relakth,” Kankri snorts into your shirt. Neither of you are very good at that, but you’re going to try anyway. “Relakth and just  _ look _ at the city.”

It’s beautiful, from up here. The trolls that live there had been  _ ecstatic _ when the Empress abdicated. There’s red banners, bright red, some with a rendition of the manacles on them – it makes you uneasy, but Kankri has told you he views it as more of a triumph – and others, of every color imaginable, flying from rooftops and doorways and arches.

In the distance, you can see six ships pulled into the station. A seventh is just now parking – a faint electric blue flicker and a following, brighter lime one signal a couple psionics descending upon it to unhook the psionic from the engine block.

“Life goes on,” Kankri murmurs. “We turned this place upside down, and, for the most part, they’re just going around their business like they used to.”

“I’d thay we turned it right thide up,” you say. He laughs, again, and turns away from the city to kiss you.

This high up, it’s quiet, and you stay up for around an hour before Kankri sighs and disentangles himself from you slightly to say, “We should head back,” with some measure of regret. “Find food and Meulin, get back to work.”

“Yeah,” you say, stealing one last kiss before flying you both back to the palace. You don’t quite drop into freefall, but you do go pretty damn fast.

Going fast is fun, especially because Kankri still clutches at you when you do. You dive, feet-first, through the window of one of the hallways – someone broke it at some point or another, and someone else cleared the glass away but didn’t replace it – slowing at the last minute to land gently. The hallway is empty.

“You do this every time, ‘tuna,” Kankri says, and you grin at him, toothy. “It stopped being funny after the first three.”

“Nope, thtill funny,” you say. “Meulin thinkth it’th funny.”

“Meulin’s sense of humor is a mess. She thinks that time when Mindfang hid Redglare’s glasses and Rosa ended up chasing her with a chainsaw is funny.”

“That wath pretty funny.”

He shakes his head at you, and tugs at your arm. “We should go find her,” he says.

“Yeah,” you say, and you follow him down the hallway, towards Meulin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaand then they lived happily ever after and i ignored the fact that this would probably technically be a doomed timeline shh. shhhh. everyone is okay now.  
> I've got some other stuff in the works, but I don't want to post anything before it gets finished, so we'll see how it goes. Again, thanks for reading!


End file.
